Building Community
As a credit union, the value of community is vital to how we do business. And so, with the rising popularity of blogs as a powerful new tool to build different types of communities online, we’ve decided it’s time to join in and launch our own. Welcome to the official blog of Tech CU, a resource for you, our members, and place for sharing and exchanging ideas that will help to add value to our credit union and the community at large.
To celebrate, we’re giving away a premium coffee card worth $5 to the first 100 members who register and comment on our newly created blog.
One of our main goals for 2007 has been to encourage more of our members and employees to give back. In February, we held our first Tech CU Community Spirit Day where we brought together 15 Bay Area nonprofits with members and employees to let people know how they can volunteer or donate in the Bay Area. Out of that event, we’ve sponsored several community projects, including our most recent, a day of building with Habit for Humanity (see below).
Today, we’re launching the Tech CU What I Could Change with $1,000, initiative. We invite you to submit your ideas for a community change project here in the Bay Area. All ideas will be shared through this blog site, where everyone is invited to comment and vote. The top five, as chosen by voters, will be featured on this blog. Tech CU will then select the winner and fund their project with $1,000. How’s that for putting our money where our mouth is? We’ll be accepting ideas for projects through August 31, and the winner will be announced September 19, 2007. So, if you’ve ever had a great idea to help your community, but didn’t have the money to do it, now is your chance to make a difference. Click here for more information and how to submit.
Here are a few other community projects we’ve recently sponsored:
Habitat for Humanity (A Day of Building)
Twenty members and employees from Tech CU volunteered June 1 to help construct a new, affordable home in North San Jose for a local family. The home is part of the Silicon Valley Habitat for Humanity Murphy Avenue Project, which aims to construct six four-bedroom homes along Murphy Avenue by the end of 2007. One of the largest building projects attempted by Habitat for Humanity in Silicon Valley, the development promises to give several deserving families an affordable house in one of the highest priced real estate markets in the country. If you’d like to learn more about this project, you can visit the Habitat for Humanity SV web site.
View a YouTube video slideshow of photos from the event below:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2DL8ImIYos[/youtube]
Girls for a Change (GFC) Supplies Drive
We recently completed a supplies drive for Girls For a Change (GFC) that brought in dozens of school and office items like pens, paper, white boards, tape, glue, staplers, envelopes, and more. GFC, an organization that empowers thousands of teen girls to create and lead social change in their communities, makes use of these items on various projects throughout the year, and they are one of our three community partners in 2007. Our other two partners are City Team Ministries and Resource Area for Teachers (RAFT).
Vanished Children’s Alliance Online Photo Campaign
We’ve partnered with the Vanished Children Alliance (VCA), a national nonprofit that assists in the location and recovery of missing or abducted children, to help disseminate information about missing children in the Bay Area. As you may have noticed, Tech CU regularly rotates an image of a missing child on our online banking login page. The photo links to the VCA website where you can find out more about the case, as well as a phone number to contact if you have information that may assist in the child’s recovery. We are now also featuring this photo on our blog site. 
Throughout the year, Tech CU will continue to sponsor events like these that support Bay Area nonprofits in the areas of financial literacy and children, youth, and family services.
If you’re interested in participating or donating, go to our community page. We’ll also post notices of upcoming community events on this blog.
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Collins Foundation provides space for organizations working for nonviolence, respect for diversity, and human and civil rights, in their historic farmhouse at 48 South Seventh Street in San Jose. The award winning youth arts and culture group Silicon Valley Debug got its start there. Their major tenant these days is San Jose Peace Center, which offers a Friday night film series.
I had been participating in the Aga Khan Foundation and the FOCUS Humanitarian Assistance for the last quarter of a century. Both are non-profit organizations under the Aga Khan Developement Network, http://www.akdn.org. The contribution is tax deductable.
The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) focuses on health, education, culture, rural development, institution-building and the promotion of economic development. It is dedicated to improving living conditions and opportunities for the poor, without regard to their faith, origin or gender.