LillyPad, Our Company Blog: What I Like Most About Lilly Global Day of Service
LillyPad, Our Company Blog: Lilly Global Day of Service – My Top 10 List
OCTOBER 5TH, 2011 | BY: DAVID MARBAUGH
Armies of red-shirted volunteers will be swarming local communities on or around October 6 for Lilly’s fourth Global Day of Service. It’s a day of great pride for Lilly employees, when we get the opportunity to give back – en masse – to the communities in which we live and work.
It’s one of my favorite days of the year. I’ll put on my red shirt I’ve worn for the past three years, now splattered with yellow paint from a mural I worked on in 2008 and blue splotches from sprucing up a day care center in 2009. And it’s a little frayed from a grueling but rewarding day last year of planting trees and shrubs along Interstate 70, the main corridor to and from the Indianapolis airport.
In the first three years, Lilly employees logged nearly 300,000 hours of volunteer service at an estimated value of nearly $6 million. Pretty amazing.
This year, we’ll add substantially to that total. We anticipate 24,000 employees in 39 countries will participate in the 2011 Lilly Global Day of Service. The projects and activities we’ll do are as diverse as our global workforce – promoting healthy outdoor living, supporting local wellness efforts, helping those less fortunate, improving the environment … and on and on.
Here are the top ten things I love about Lilly’s Global Day of Service:
10: Giving back
9: Getting my hands dirty
8: Witnessing the amazing preparation and choreography that goes into pulling something like this off
7: Working side-by-side with teammates and, often times, other Lilly employees I’ve never met
6: Knowing that tens of thousands of other Lilly employees are doing similar work around the globe
5: Being asked by someone – usually at a gas station or other type of store – “Why is everybody where those red shirts today?” – and answering that question with pride
4: Knowing that the work we do has a lasting impact on our communities – and seeing that impact multiply over the years
3: Working for a company that is truly committed to being a good neighbor and global citizen
2: Drinking beer at a local watering hole with teammates to celebrate a hard day’s work
1: Telling my two boys why dad’s wearing this red shirt.
Check out a short video about Lilly’s Global Day of Service here.
About Eli Lilly and Company
Lilly, a leading innovation-driven corporation is developing a growing portfolio of pharmaceutical products by applying the latest research from its own worldwide laboratories and from collaborations with eminent scientific organizations. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind., Lilly provides answers – through medicines and information – for some of the world's most urgent medical needs. Additional information about Lilly is available at www.lilly.com.
