Congratulations! You made it through Black Friday and Cyber Monday – hopefully with some new pairs of Levi’s® in tow. Today, our calendars fall upon another important holiday, and one that happens to align much with the values we hold dear here at LS&Co.: Giving Tuesday.
Around the world, Giving Tuesday is a day to work towards the greater good, finding ways that we can all do something to help our local and global communities. Families, charities, students, and businesses come together for the common purpose of celebrating generosity. It’s not unlike LS&Co.’s own Community Day in May, when employees worldwide take a day out of the office to work on inspired projects for the benefit of their world.
At LS&Co., we work to practice empathy, integrity, originality and courage every day. Our fleet of employees volunteers their time in and out of the workplace, putting their efforts towards the greater good. It’s all done in the spirit of our founder, Levi Strauss. In 1853, Strauss began a legacy of giving with his donation to the Edgewood Home for Boys & Girls Children’s Orphanage (now Edgewood Center for Children and Families, whom we still donate to today). Ever since, a spirit of giving has been engrained in our company culture, and we provide employees a multitude of opportunities and incentives to contribute.
From running art workshops with AIDS patients in Thailand to helping rescue abandoned animals in South Africa to serving dinner to homeless families in San Francisco, LS&Co. empowers workers to pick the causes they care most about, and organize action in the form of Community Involvement Teams. All it takes is three or more employees to join together for a cause, and LS&Co. supports them with funding to bring their mission to life.
We also match our employee’s donations to qualified charities dollar for dollar. Whether those earnings go to one of LS&Co.’s own Foundations — the Red Tab Foundation helps employees and retirees who face unexpected financial emergencies, and the Levi Strauss Foundation improves communities where employees and factory workers live and work — or their local food bank, LS&Co. makes sure that employees’ monetary contributions will have double the punch.
We also offer full-time employees up to five hours per month (60 hours per year) paid time off to volunteer at a charitable organization of their choice. And when workers donate their own time to volunteer for organizations — ranging from their children’s school to their neighborhood soup kitchen — we match their hours worked with charitable donations.
We hope you find some time to give back today. But let’s also try to take a cue from Levi Strauss himself, and rather than spend just one day giving back, think about how we can make a big impact 365 days of the year. Even acts as small as donating used denim to your local Goodwill can help those in need, and en masse, make a major difference. Giving Tuesday, and the entire holiday season, is the perfect time to reflect on how we can use our own actions to help others, and in doing so, make the world a better place.
