From our earliest years, Edelman has been at the forefront of helping leading brands and corporations create lasting connections between business and social issues and our own research indicates the importance of citizenship for building trust in corporations and brands. In honor of our upcoming 60thanniversary, Edelman will be “walking our talk” and making an impact on society in a meaningful way, as my father has always done throughout his 60 years of leading the company.”
We will be commemorating our upcoming 60th anniversary with a company-wide “Summer of Service” from July 16th through September 13th. We’re calling our “Summer of Service” 603 (sixty cubed)—to honor what my father, Dan Edelman, started 60 years ago, with our 60+ offices contributing 60 days of volunteerism to support hunger and poverty alleviation—an issue that Edelman employees selected as our corporate citizenship focus for the next few years.
We have selected the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger, as our global partner for the 60³ initiative. WFP has extraordinary reach and impact, providing food assistance to more than 90 million people in over 70 of the world’s poorest countries each year. Individual offices can also choose to continue existing partnerships with local NGOs focused on hunger and poverty alleviation.
Edelman’s 4,500 employees will each have four hours of paid time off to contribute to this initiative through both professional and general volunteerism. Employees will also have the option of fundraising to support WFP’s “school meals” program. In honor of my dad’s legacy of giving back to the community, the Daniel J. Edelman Family Foundation will provide up to $100,000 to match funds raised by our offices to support WFP.
John Edelman is managing director of Global Engagement and Corporate Responsibility.