In 2008, the
Intel Involved program was expanded to Brazil with the mission of accomplishing 10 hours of volunteer of each employee.
As a sales and marketing office, the steering committee was faced with the challenge of the heavy traffic in São Paulo. And, for that reason, some employees were resistant to leave the office for volunteer activities and had limited experience in volunteering. Definitely not enough to accomplish our country volunteering goal.
United Way was expanding its activities in the country in the mentoring area and was looking for creative ideas on how to do it. Opportunity! We understood what was needed: volunteers and space. We decided to have the youth benefiting from the mentoring program (Investing Pays Off, a program that incentives the youth to save for investing in education with clear explanation of their role in the society) to come to Intel facilities and have the content delivered by the experts in Finance, Marketing and Sales departments from Intel. United Way was delighted with the opportunity and since then we've been delivering the mentoring program once a week, every week. More than 60% of the youngsters that take part in the mentoring program get a job in the same year and more than 90% say that they learned a lot for their lives.
This year, we've decided to challenge a few groups at Intel to contribute even more by changing the mentors and letting others have the same experience. Success again! That's the story the videos (in Portuguese) are about-the joy of exchanging experience with the youth and the results they are gathering. Even if you don't speak Portuguese, you can get a good sense of the program through the videos and the impact that this is having on both the youth, and also on the Intel employees. We are so proud we made it happen in Brazil and would love to learn from others about their volunteer experiences and projects in the country.
