Ten employees from the Arthrex Boston office recently used their Volunteer PTO Day to offer their assistance at the local Cradles to Crayons Giving Factory.
Cradles to Crayons’ mission is to provide children living in homeless or low-income situations with new (or like-new) essential items such as clothing, coats, shoes and school supplies. Founded in Boston in 2002, the organization has since expanded to offer direct support to children in Chicagoland, Greater Philadelphia, New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Product Development Senior Engineer I Manish Thapa coordinated the team’s Volunteer PTO Day.
“Last year, we used our volunteer day to work with Habitat for Humanity,” he said, “and we decided to do something different this year.”
Joining Manish at the Giving Factory were Product Development Senior Engineer II Joe Algeri, Director of Marketing Software Development Danny Beard, UX Researcher Lead Judy Blostein, Product Development Senior Engineer I Alex DelMonaco, Salesforce Administrator II Rachel Felten, IT Software Engineering Team Lead Ken Green, Talent Acquisition Coordinator Laurie Marshall, Business Systems Senior Analyst Gauri Sawant and Software Engineer Senior Ryan State.
The team spent its time at Cradles to Crayons sorting donated clothes by size and season and then “shopping” in the warehouse to fulfill specific requests that had come in from families and local organizations that aid in the distribution of donated goods.
Once the necessary items had been collected, the “care packages” (Cradles to Crayon’s term for the curated boxes) were packed and prepared for shipment.
“This was my first opportunity to volunteer as an Arthrex employee, and it was a great experience,” Judy said. “I was impressed with the Cradles to Crayons warehouse and staff, and I loved the teamwork aspect of picking out outfits and making sure the pieces went together.”
Judy also enjoyed working alongside team members she doesn’t typically get to work with on a daily basis.
“The opportunity to give our time to serve underprivileged children in our area was truly a rewarding experience,” Manish said. “Thank you to Arthrex for allowing – and encouraging – us to participate in volunteer activities like this. It shows that as a company, in addition to our main mission of Helping Surgeons Treat Their Patients Better®, we’re also working to help make the world a better place in all ways.”
Arthrex’s Volunteer PTO benefit allows employees eight hours of paid time off each year in order to give back to their community. Look for more stories of Arthrex employees using their Volunteer PTO benefit on Arthrex LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages.