Hardwired into Diversey’s DNA is the belief that every community in which we operate should be a better place because we are there. While providing jobs and family-supporting incomes are essential parts of that equation, we believe that our commitment to our host communities ought to include something more.
What that ‘something more’ is varies from community to community, based on the principle that Diversey employees should take the initiative in determining how they can best give back.
Diversey’s team at our plant in Nalagarth, India, have provided a case in point. Every year since 2009, Diversey’s employees and contract workers there have participated in an initiative of their own creation that they have appropriately named the Joy of Giving. The initiative benefits a local elementary school supported by the Indian government. The children who attend the school are from low-income families, many of them the sons and daughters of migrant workers.
Every year our Nalagarh team does something different to benefit the school and its children, from installing a hand-washing station one year and building a toilet another year, to providing dental checkups for the kids and distributing desks for the school’s classrooms.
In 2017, Diversey’s 55 employees and 100 contract workers organized two Joy of Giving initiatives. During National Safety Week in March they distributed pencil boxes to each of the school’s 70 students. And in December, they gave each student a warm jacket.
One of the collateral benefits of giving jackets to the kids was an improvement in attendance. Because the school is open-air and the temperature dips as low as 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) in winter, the school has historically experienced a drop in attendance during that season.
School officials have expressed their thanks to Diversey’s Nalagarh team and the local newspaper one year reported the team’s distribution of sweaters, shoes and caps to the kids. But the greatest expression of appreciation came from the smiles of the children who understood that people they hardly knew cared enough to make their lives – and their education – a little better.
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Diversey
Published Feb 18, 2019 3pm EST / 12pm PST / 8pm GMT / 9pm CET