As we reflect on this past year, thankful feels like an understatement.
At REED, we are thankful for our supportive team that challenges and encourages each other to grow every day. We are thankful for our clients, who trust us to grow their brands on a local, regional and national level.
And we are especially thankful that because of these clients, we can make a meaningful impact in communities across the globe through our company-wide initiative to give back.
It’s called Be The Good, and whether you realize it or not, you’re already a part of it. Each year, our agency uses a portion of our revenue to provide travel grants to individuals to do volunteer or mission work around the U.S. and abroad.
It kicked off in 2015 and we’ve since sent people to travel more than 150,000 miles — which is nearly the distance of six trips around the globe. It means so much to us that by doing great work for our clients, we’ve been able to make an impact in places like Africa, Slovenia, Belize, Ireland, Costa Rica, Ecuador and even closer to home in the Appalachia region of Kentucky.
We’ve recently expanded the program to allow employees to participate. We’ll fund a trip of their choosing without it counting against their PTO days. Rachel Davis, Senior Account Manager, chose to break hers up into several half days and spent every Tuesday working with refugees right here in Nashville.
Our team also opted to take a portion of profits to send to Carpio, which is the largest slum in North and Central America. In the past, our team has provided several Be The Good grants to this area, and Lauren has personally traveled down there multiple times. Most of the residents are Nicaraguan refugees living in extreme poverty, with a very high level of physical and sexual abuse. We received word that the feeding program through the ministry was out of funds and many families were going hungry. Because of our Be The Good program, we were able to divert funds toward this dire need.
This is all due to our amazing partners, clients and friends.
Thank you.