Giving education a boost for new school year

09/13

TI employees at sites around the world – including Texas, Arizona, California, Maine, India, China and the Philippines – helped prepare students for the 2013-2014 school year by participating in a variety of back-to-school efforts. Watch slideshow.

TI employees at sites around the world helped prepare students for the 2013-2014 school year by participating in back-to-school efforts ranging from school supply drives and scholarships to school beautification programs at local schools and nonprofit agencies.

TI is focused primarily on supporting science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and, outside the U.S., access to education. These are the company's top philanthropic priorities.

"Back-to-school season is a time of year when low-income families need a little extra help in preparing their kids for school with all the school supplies needed to be successful," said Trisha Cunningham, TI's chief citizenship officer.

"Our employees around the world are making a real difference in their local communities by getting involved in these efforts."

These efforts included the following:

Animals, books and back to school To help prepare Dallas-area students to go back to school the Dallas Zoo brought a few critters, and Reading Partners, one of TI’s nonprofit partners, set up reading corners at TI’s headquarters in Dallas. TI employees read Dr. Seuss's "If I Ran the Zoo" and other books to their children and guests, which included a small group of preschoolers from Vogel Alcove, a child care center for homeless families.

• In the San Francisco Bay Area, TI was the presenting sponsor of the Family Giving Tree Back-to-School Drive. TI employees donated more than $15,000 to send over 700 local children to school with new backpacks and supplies, TI's Education Technology Group donated 400 scientific calculators to the effort, and 114 TI volunteers provided 275 hours to area drive efforts.

• About 250 economically challenged children in India received scholarships to enroll in primary school from the Early Bird Scholarship Program. This program is funded and run by TI volunteers.

• In Tucson, Ariz., TI employees donated $4,000 to the Employee School Supply Drive effort. The drive benefited students in the Sunnyside Unified District, where 85 percent of students are classified as low income.

• TI employees in Dallas collected more than 165 backpacks and enough supplies to fill them plus more in a back-to-school drive benefiting the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center. Donated gift cards funded the purchase of school uniforms, and TI's Education Technology group donated 50 calculators for the drive.

• TI Shanghai volunteers organized a collection activity that resulted in seven large boxes filled with notebooks, pens, books and sport supplies. The donations were sent to a volunteer teaching team of students from Fudan University, which brought the supplies to students in Caojian Village, a poverty-stricken area in Yunnan Province. Volunteers also wrote words of encouragement to students on note cards.

• Employees at TI's facility in Maine sponsored a volunteer project that supported Ruth's Reusable Resources, an organization that transfers surplus business supplies and merchandise to area schoolchildren and teachers. TI employees also wrote encouragement cards, which were placed inside the backpacks for students in need.

• More than 100 TI volunteers and partner suppliers took part in Brigada Eskwela 2013 to support education. TI's Brigada Eskwela program is held annually at San Vicente Elementary School in Bamban, Tarlac, which is only a few minutes away from the TI Clark (Philippines) site.

• TI employees in Dallas participated in Education Technology's annual school supply drive, which benefited homeless families served by the Vogel Alcove, an area nonprofit organization.

• TI was a sponsor of the Mayor's Back-to-School Fair in Dallas, which provided school supplies to 15,000 low-income children.