Last month, over 350 retail team members from our Americas region attended our annual Field Leadership Conference (FLC) in Las Vegas. The conference is an opportunity for our regional, district and store managers to come together and learn about upcoming product, share best practices and plan for the holiday season.
Because supporting the communities where our employees work and live is part of our DNA at LS&Co., the week definitely wouldn’t have been complete without giving back to the Las Vegas community that hosted our conference.
On the last day of conference, attendees came together and got to work building, assembling and painting park benches, planters and doghouses to donate to two local non-profit organizations:
- Create a Change Now is fighting childhood obesity and changing the way families eat by educating and empowering children to make healthier food choices that are nutritious and delicious.
- Furgotten Friends is a no kill animal shelter, working to find homes and loved ones for abandoned and rescued animals,
Working with Create a Change in partnership with Joseph E Thiriot Elementary School, our teams built and decorated unique planter boxes and park benches to be donated. The boxes came complete with seed packets, gardening kits and with the guarantee that local children will learn about a sustainable approach to gardening and growing their own vegetables. The park benches will reside in the courtyard of the Joseph E Thiriot Elementry School and will provide kids and teachers a place to sit while they garden or have outside learning sessions.
In partnership with Furgotten Friends, our teams assembled prefabbed doghouses and lent their creative touch to the outside design. These dog houses will be helpful to Furgotten Friends, and allow for many of the rescue dogs to feel they have a sense of home.
After presenting the builds to these two organizations, LS&Co. awarded a $2,500 grant to provide additional support for all that they do in the Las Vegas community. Tears were brought to their eyes — it was a surprise they didn’t see coming. Furgotten Friends even shared that grant would pay off almost 90 percent of their outstanding current vet bill.
Shawna Karl of Thiriot Elementary School had this to say of the support LS&Co. employees provided: “This was an amazing adventure this morning. I cried! It was so incredible and the generosity that you all displayed to each of the non-profits is so inspiring.”
The Las Vegas event is just one example of how our dedicated retail teams are giving back to local communities – as a group they’ve donated more than 4,000 hours of volunteer time so far this year.
Here are a few photos from the day:
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