RE Cares Month, spotlighting our global community involvement takes place each September. Launching activities for 2008, with a video of staff around the world engaged in community activities, CEO Sir Crispin Davis said, “RE Cares unites us as one company bridging boundaries between roles, geographies, and divisions...Getting involved is the best way to experience the benefits of the RE Cares programme.”
RE Cares Month 2008 touched thousands of employees with volunteering and fundraising of every description: for example, Elsevier Tokyo collected food for Second Harvest Japan and then helped cook and distribute it to homeless people or those living in shelters; LexisNexis Albany gathered clothes, shoes and blankets for among others Coats for Kids; and Reed Business Information New York participated in the annual Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation Race for the Cure.
During RE Cares Month we held our second global book drive with over 10,000 employees donating 18,208 books for local and developing world readers. We offered $1,000 to the office donating the largest relative number of books for the charity of their choice. The winning office was Elsevier Houston, which collected 45 books per person as part of a departmental competition. Their books went to the Friends of the Houston Public Library and they donated their prize money to the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund. The Relief Fund, established at the request of Houston Mayor Bill White, was established to help nonprofits provide shelter and temporary housing, food and supplies to people affected by Hurricane Ike in 2008.
And in RE Cares Month, we held our first-ever global fundraising drive raising $62,000 for Save the Children’s Rewrite the Future campaign, which furthers education for children living in conflict affected countries. We supported essential educational projects in Southern Sudan, Colombia and Afghanistan. Read more.