The past year has brought lasting impacts to communities across the world. In total, over 255 million people lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic, schools were shut down and businesses struggled to survive.
While there’s light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccine rollout, many are still dealing with the aftermath of the last year. At VistaVu, we navigated restricted business environments by reducing spending and asking our team to do more with less.
This mentality carried across to how we support our communities. With cash limitations based on different circumstances, we needed to get creative so that we could continue to give back to the communities that we live and work in. Over the past year, we’ve worked with the United Way of Calgary and Area – Elders’ Knowledge Circle and Computers with Causes to leverage our earned rewards points that we accumulated from company credit cards to purchase Chromebooks for those in need.
The Elders’ Knowledge Circle
The Elders’ Knowledge Circle is a group who works to establish a centralized model where knowledge and wisdom from Indigenous Elders will be preserved, protected, revitalized, and shared to bridge the gap in cultural understanding and reconciliation for the next generation. While these meetings usually take place in person, with Covid-19, the Elders required a way to connect online using video conferencing to support pandemic response and recovery work in their communities.
Working with the United Way in Calgary, our Canadian Headquarters, we were able to utilize our loyalty points to purchase 5 Chromebooks to help the Elders’ Knowledge Circle maintain important communication and social distancing.
“The Elders are truly grateful to VistaVu Solutions for such an amazing gift. They are so blessed that they can keep in touch with their families through video calls and continue to work with the community in a virtual way, during these challenging times” – Daisy Giroux, United Way of Calgary and Area.
A few members of the Elders’ Knowledge Circle receiving their Chromebooks.
Computers with Causes
After seeing the impact of our first Chromebook donation, we started researching other ways to give back. We came across Computers with Causes and chose to support this organization based on its vast reach. It was difficult to select which locations to donate to, but we decided to select specific communities where our customers reside so that we could support places that were most meaningful.
Computers with Causes donates computers, tablets, & laptops to build computer labs in impoverished schools, youth centers, and military veteran resource centers. This access to technology gives students, teachers and returning military members opportunities for training & education. We donated a total of 15 Chromebooks to various locations across the US.
Donations are made on a case-by-case basis to those most in need.
This year has been full of lessons on how resilient we, as a global community, can be. We’re grateful to have been able to support these two great causes & encourage companies to think outside of the box when faced with financial challenges.
If you’d like to contribute to one of these organizations visit:
