Good Goes Global During Our Volunteer Week

More than 3,000 General Mills employees participated in our Global Volunteer Week, helping to treat the world with care at various events during Earth Day week.

The efforts, from 42 locations (including 21 countries outside of North America) last week, resulted in more than 6,000 volunteer hours, which included impacting the environment in a positive way, and helping support global hunger relief efforts.

“We are incredibly impressed with General Mills employees across the world, who rolled up their sleeves and made the world a better place during our Global Volunteer Week,” says Minn Wang, senior program manager at the General Mills Foundation. “The fact that participation increased by three times compared to last year tells us that our employees truly want to live out the company’s purpose and make good go round in their communities.”

Here are some of the highlights.

General Mills Korea employees worked on several projects, including preparing an area for planting in Umyeonsan Natural Ecological Park in Seoul.

Some of our UK employees also spent time working outside at a community garden and education center.

In Spain, employees in Madrid learned about bees by interacting with them and other pollinators.

In Belvidere, Illinois, employees from our plant there celebrated Earth Day by cleaning up near a local highway as part of the Adopt-a-Highway program. They collected more than 30 bags of trash.

In our home state of Minnesota, employees were active in several projects. One involved cleanup of the area where General Mills had its start, along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. It’s part of an ongoing effort to maintain Mill Ruins Park, where our predecessor company began with its first flour mill in 1866.

And in France, even though it was back on April 6, we also wanted to highlight an event that employees from our office near Paris participated in. It was coordinated with “Action Contre la Faim” (“Action Against Hunger”). They took part in an event that collected money for the association through activities like walking and running. The more time each employee spent working out, in a maximum time of an hour and a half, the more money was collected.