RTI International's Waltham Office Wins Award for Charitable Work
January 10, 2011
RTI International’s Waltham office is the recipient of a 2010 Building Impact Silver Footprint Award for the charitable work they did in the Boston community.
Footprint Awards are sponsored by Building Impact, a Boston organization that connects companies to non-profit and community outreach volunteer opportunities. The awards are given to companies that perform a set amount of charitable work in a year.
To receive the Silver Footprint, the Waltham office hosted and participated in three distinctly different volunteer efforts.
In October, the Waltham employees hosted a No Sew Fleece event in which money was raised to purchase fleece material, which was then used to create blankets. The blankets, created by members of the staff and their families, were made over the course of an afternoon, and were donated to the Room to Grow organization. The organization works to enrich the lives of babies born to poverty, and enough fleece was purchased to create 16 blankets for babies in need.
In November, RTI teamed up with Pie in the Sky organization, which allowed employees to purchase a delicious Thanksgiving pie with all proceeds going to charity. The purchase of just one $25 pie fed a critically ill, homebound client for a week. This season, the organization raised more than $500,000 for their meals program.
Finally, in December, the Waltham staff, along with other tenants of their building, organized a blood drive benefiting Children's Hospital Boston at Waltham. The blood mobile came directly to the office, which allowed a large number of RTI employees to participate. The blood drive was a huge success, and RTI had the highest number of participants from the building.
Norma DiVito, the Waltham office manager, worked with their property management group, Crosspoint Associates, and Building Impact to coordinate all of the volunteer efforts. Those efforts would have been fruitless, however, without employee participation.
"I am always amazed at how quickly people step up to help," DiVito said. "Our employees always donate their time and their money to help others. It is so nice to see how much they genuinely care."