ODC volunteers - "On Demand Community"
"No company can mandate volunteerism. The decision and self-sacrifice come from within the individual. What we can do is encourage and support this distinctive aspect of our culture by providing education, technology, funding and recognition to tens of thousands of IBM colleagues who enrich their communities with their expertise and caring."
Sam Palmisano - IBM CEO & Chairman
IBM's tradition of volunteerism is as old as the company itself. IBM founder Thomas J. Watson Sr. pioneered the belief that businesses have a responsibility to their communities. He challenged his first group of employees to stand for something beyond their professional lives - to share their time and talents with their own cities and towns. IBM employees accepted the challenge and they've never looked back. Community service has remained an IBM hallmark, even as the company expanded into new countries and cultures.
Over the last several years, a digital revolution prompted IBM leaders to refocus this tradition of community involvement on our unique potential to contribute. Using its innovation and technology, IBM created a series of award-winning solutions to help address social issues such as advancing school improvement, helping not-for-profit community agencies better serve people in need, and bridging the digital divide.
The tradition instilled by Thomas Watson has flourished; now, under Sam Palmisano, we are reinvigorating community service in the e-business era with our On Demand Community.
In step with our e-business on demand strategy, IBM is equipping employee volunteers with a set of on demand tools based on the successful technology solutions created by IBM for schools and community agencies. These tools enable employees - anytime, anywhere - to learn more about the program and how to get involved, receive online volunteer training and access Web-based programs and solutions that improve the quality of services in measurable ways.
Using On Demand Community, employees can easily give dynamic classroom presentations that emphasize math and science, or mentor a student online. They can help teachers understand and use the Internet as a powerful tool to enhance teaching and learning, or show a not-for-profit agency how to create a technology plan, or use Web Adaptation Technology to aid seniors or disabled access the power of the Web.
On Demand Community builds upon our employees' volunteer spirit. It creates a powerful worldwide initiative, enabling us all to bring the IBM brand to our community volunteer work. It has the potential to change forever the dynamics of a company's role in its communities. No business but IBM has the history and tradition, and skills in its workforce, to meet such a challenge. And no other business can match the skills and dedication of IBMers worldwide who will make it succeed.
After establishing the official frames for their activities in the first quarter of 2007, ODC Hungary, the volunteering employees by IBM are ready to offer their energy outside the IBM. ODC Hungary is an umbrella, under which employees can find opportunities for feel themselves as part of a unique community. It provides possibilities for being a volunteer in team, volunteering alone, helping for a small community or supporting one person, giving him or her a higher standard of living.
The volunteers by IBM can present some achievements already in Budapest:
- Running with blind people - Margit-sziget - May, 2007
- Participation on International Children's Day - Millenáris Park - May, 2007
- Garden restoration - Füvészkert, Budapest - June, 2007
- Teaching English to children in need in Bokréta Homes - June 2007
- WWF "Climate Change Campaigne" Roadshow - Budapest and south and eastern Hungary - September, 2007
- Renewal Day/Hungarian Energy Klub - September, 2007
A short notice connected to participation on International Children's Day:
"When I read about the International Children's Day - which was organized by United Way - and "integrating education" in the email of UW, I just could not imagine what this type of education could mean. With two of my colleagues I got the task to assist the official UW volunteer in coordinating the bands. Sitting in the audience during the concerts and later on being among the dancing and singing children aged 3-10 there was no meaning for "integrated education". There was nothing to integrate and separate. The smiling, happy children were simply having a lot of fun together. There was no role of words like handicapped, retarded or healthy, but the happy faces instead."
