Community Engagement accomplishments in 2020
March 01, 2021
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2020 brought a lot of challenges—giving back to our communities wasn’t one of them
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We have a passion for creating strong and vibrant communities. Our goal in Community Engagement is to connect with communities and help strengthen them in meaningful ways. Through donations, sponsorships, and volunteering within our four pillars—arts, education, environment, and health and wellness—we can achieve this goal. We look for strategic partnerships that leverage and empower entire communities while recognizing that each community has unique needs and opportunities.
Since we began tracking these donations, sponsorships, and volunteer opportunities in 2007, our Community Engagement contributions have exceeded $26.7 million. Although we focus primarily on our four pillars, Stantec also supports diversity in the communities where we live and work. We celebrate and get involved in activities that nurture inclusion in the broader marketplace, participate in community partnerships, and promote programs that enable engagement with women, members of visible minorities, BIPOC, and people with disabilities.
In 2020, Stantec donated more than $3.24 million to organizations around the globe. We re-allocated our previous national funding of ACE Mentorship with a $51,500 donation to 17 of our Stantec affiliates for various scholarships awarded to students that are mentored by Stantec employees. Unfortunately, we made the tough decision to postpone our annual signature Company sponsored volunteer event, Stantec in the Community Week, due to COVID-19. In its place, we started an internal Acts of Kindness initiative which saw our employees helping their communities during these trying times. Bi-weekly, we would donate $500 to a participating employees’ charity of choice for a total of $4,500 donated. We also made extraordinary donations to organizations around the globe to help with COVID-19 relief efforts. This donation included nine Food Bank organizations in nine different countries, United Nations, Direct Relief, and the World Health Organization.
We know mental health is important; if affects how we think, feel, and act, how we manage stress and make healthy choices. This is why we donated over $76,000 towards Movember, Beyond Blue, Canadian Mental Health Association, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness. We also created the Stantec BetterTogether Fund to help Stantec employees who are facing financial hardship immediately after a natural disaster or unforeseen personal challenges. Our Company seeded the fund with a $200,000 donation but will also rely on individual donations from employees.
Globally, we provided over $480,500 in scholarships to students. Recognizing that we must increase our focus on finding more ways to support underrepresented populations in our industry, we have created the Stantec Equity & Diversity Scholarship as we believe everyone has a right to education. Stantec will award $200,000 annually to students in STEAM, and, there will be 10 paid internships available to applicants.
Stantec continued to build our I&D/BIPOC relationships by partnering with organizations like National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), and American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES). We have donated nearly $97,000 towards these and other similar organizations.
We hope to build on these accomplishments in 2021. We are committed to reaching our 2030 goal—to invest a further $30 million into community organizations around the globe—because we know how important it is to give back to the community. We want to make an impact, strengthen the places we live and work, and give opportunities to those who need it. Through funding opportunities, we will not only achieve our goal, but we will continue to help charitable organizations within our communities strengthen their ability to reach their goals, work effectively, and sustain themselves over time.
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