Community Day 2024: a day of togetherness and good deeds
27 June 2024
When thinking about social responsibility, here, at Forvis Mazars, we think about more than what we must do, we think about what we want to do, what impact we want to have, and what kind of actions we want to define us. Throughout the years, we have found the answer to that, an answer that transformed into a concept, a plan, and finally a concrete initiative. Today, we are talking about Community Day, an initiative near and dear to our hearts, reaching its third edition this year. Through it, we have learned what a united team can do and how powerful we can be when we work together for a greater goal. Ready to dive in?
Community Day represents an initiative born from our pledge to create a positive impact within our community and the environment that enables us to grow. Each year, we’re making sure to provide the right opportunities for our people to get involved and be part of the change. For this, we are taking into consideration their wishes and suggestions when carefully crafting our company-wide initiatives.
Given our industry, values and commitment, we have chosen to focus on offering better access to quality education and preventing school dropout, especially in rural Romania. This focus has become a driver and a motivator for all of us, seamlessly integrating itself into our company culture. For the past three years, we have made it our mission to honor our commitment and our focus, reaching our third renovated school this year.
The name of the event itself encapsulates its very essence: a moment of togetherness, of empathy, of community. This goes beyond our external impact and reflects what the event means also for us as a team: an opportunity to come together, no matter what our job is, what department or team we are part of, united for one single goal. This year, we have continued the tradition started with the first edition of Community Day. Following the suggestions and wishes of our colleagues, we partnered with United Way Romania, a local NGO that shares our values and purpose. They have helped thousands of children from disadvantaged communities to gain access to a good quality education and increase their chances of a better future. Our path this year led to the Gymnasium in Fierbinți-Târg, Ialomița County. With a team of 100 colleagues and our amazing helpers from United Way, we embarked on the journey of the third edition of Community Day on 21 June.
Throughout the day, each of our colleagues swapped laptops and daily tasks for proper work equipment, forming teams with other colleagues from all departments and roles, to get involved in the activities planned. Our mission was clear: to offer the right environment for the children to grow and thrive in their academic journey. Together, we have managed to landscape the school’s outdoor garden, by cleaning out the entire area for dead trees and bushes, evening out the terrain surface and equipping it with benches, a wooden gazebo and plants. Some colleagues participated in the reparation and repainting of the school fence, with the same team planting the trees alongside it, all while other teams managed to build and arrange an outdoor picnic area for the children to spend time outside while enjoying their lunch or a snack throughout the day. We built, painted, planted, cleaned, moved and carried, but most importantly, we were there to help each other and to make sure no one was left alone and felt a part of the team.
Adriana Dobrea, Executive Director of United Way Romania, tells us about the event: For us, to have such dedicated partners alongside us, willing to step in to make a difference for the better is always a joy. Moreover, we have been so enthusiastic when our partners at Forvis Mazars in Romania managed to mobilize a team of 100 people, ready to offer their time, enthusiasm, and energy to completely reshape a schoolyard just outside of Bucharest. It was a record for us to have such a large number of volunteers simultaneously engaged in the same initiative. By chance, this event coincided with an important day for the United Way interventional network, 21 June representing Day of Action, an occasion dedicated to volunteering. With the help of Forvis Mazars in Romania, we celebrated properly. We give our many thanks to the volunteers for their involvement and we can’t wait to reunite again for new initiatives and good deeds.
Luminița Bornoiu, Partner, Head of Outsourcing, encapsulates below all the emotions felt by each one of our colleagues on the day of the event, offering us an authentic perspective, as a volunteer and as the person in the middle of the action at Community Day. We leave you with her words, in the hope that they will inspire you to join us in making an impact within the community, now and in the future:
When we think about the fact that our efforts made in just a couple of hours will bring a smile to the faces of children and will provide a warm environment for them to continue to grow in, we can’t help but feel the happiness and pride to have succeeded our mission. This comes to complete the professional satisfaction that we seek daily, which doesn’t always represent „everything” for us.
I was so glad to see how all of my colleagues who participated in the event got involved and made significant efforts to finish and reach all of the objectives we had set for ourselves in due time. Although all the activities took place outside, on a hot summer day with the sun shining down upon us, we managed to keep our enthusiasm until the end of the day, when we could enjoy our results, only by supporting each other when certain tasks seemed too hard to complete.
We have spent an entire day together, outside, laughing and telling stories about our personal experiences, while renovating the children’s spaces. We were all one united team of 100 members, each part of one big mission, that of giving back a part of ourselves to those in need of our help.
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