February, 2009 - Philanthropy at Tosoh America, Inc.
Giving has always been an important part of the Tosoh spirit. Especially in hard times, philanthropy and just taking the time to help out others can go a long way to making the world a better place. Tosoh America showed the way in 2008 with a donation campaign that is featured here.
The Christmas season is often called the Season for Giving, and our Tosoh teammates in Ohio took this to a new level in 2008. The Tosoh employees located in Grove City, sponsored a Giving Tree to provide gifts for local children whose families are struggling to find permanent homes and employment.
A Giving Tree, or Angel Tree, is a program where a Christmas tree is erected and decorated with ornaments containing the names and ages of children in need. The concept is common in the United States during the holiday season and provides a vehicle for individuals to donate new toys and clothes so that young children can share in the joy of receiving a gift when their parents are unable to give one.
Tosoh employees chose to take on this endeavor, and local management agreed to support the program by donating the tree, employee time, and a place to erect the tree within the Grove City office.
Ten employees volunteered their time and effort to coordinate the activity and selected the Homeless Families Foundation (HFF) as the beneficiary of the event. The HFF operates a local emergency shelter program for homeless families with children ages newborn to 18. Its mission is to provide entire families with a place to live for up to three months while the parents work with case managers to locate employment and permanent housing. Each shelter unit is fully furnished and includes cookware, linens, toiletries, cleaning supplies, and a starter food basket.
During the 2008 holiday season, the HFF had 120 children living at the shelter, and our employees chose to provide Christmas presents so that the parents would have the means to provide some joy to their children during what is undoubtedly a difficult time in their lives.
Our Tosoh teammates responded in force by purchasing gifts and placing them under the tree each day for two weeks. We are proud to say that we provided enough gifts for every single child! The true spirit of Christmas was apparent in this building and employees appear to have enjoyed the chance to participate by giving something of their own to aid strangers in need. One employee sent an e-mail to kick off the event containing the following message:
“With each of us trying to spend money wisely during these tough economic times we understand you may be hesitant to participate but we hope you might reconsider. Personally I know the benefit of these Giving Trees because as a young child my own name was on such a tree. An unknown person had placed my name on the tree knowing how our Mother struggled to provide for us. Although I will never know who that person was, I will never forget them and what they did for my family.”
Other comments from employees were as follows:
“Great team effort and great Company effort. In these times of nothing but doom and gloom news in the papers and the media, how nice to know that people still care about others.”
“What a wonderful opportunity this has been for me to be part of. This was put together in such a short period of time; I can only imagine that we will need a Semi truck to deliver the gifts next year when we begin earlier!”
“I just want to tell you how pleased, happy and excited I am for the gratitude of everyone here at Tosoh! When you see the overwhelming support we got from this giving you can't help but get tears and chills!”
“Thank you all so much for organizing this opportunity for Tosoh employees to give to others. I appreciate your time and efforts. It was a blessing to participate in such a wonderful outreach.”
Special thanks to Traci Brown, Karen Fahrion, Shio Ito, Amanda Kamnitzer, Mike Mackim, Jessica Newsome, Andrew Smith, Mary Valent, Denise Weygandt, and Tom Wood for coordinating the effort and personally delivering the gifts to the shelter.