By: Kim Hollenshead >> Zenoss Cares began informally in fall of 2014. Zenoss employees began participating in Texas' Adopt-a-Highway program when they signed up to take care of a stretch of FM 620 near the Austin, Texas headquarters. Since that time, volunteer employees of Zenoss don their reflective orange vests with trashbags in hand once a quarter to make sure they're doing their part to keep Austin cleaned up.
While the highway clean up has been successful and well participated, Zenoss started wondering if there were other ways for our employees to give back to our local communities. With this in mind, the groups Zenoss Cares was created in Spring of 2016 in order to find other avenues of volunteerism that would allow our employees to continue to be more involved with worthwhile causes. Our focused areas in the Zenoss Cares charter includes: animals, community development, education, environment, health and human services.
As the Zenoss Cares team began meeting on a regular basis many ideas were discussed and we were able to organize our first outing since forming in June 2016. The Central Texas Food Bank was the place where 15 employees spent half of their workday. We were tasked with sorting and boxing canned and box good for distribution among the food banks 21 area counties. In our five hours on site we processed over 5,000 lbs of food which provided 4,700 meals to central Texans in need.
This past Friday we came together again, but this time in a school supply collection effort at our annual Zenoss company picnic at Westlake Beach. Zenoss employees and their families donated over 25 backpacks, lunch bags, stacks of paper, and piles of pens, pencils, crayons and the like to SafePlace Austin. The mounds of school supplies were simply overwhelming and continue to show our communities how caring Zenoss' employees are about their neighbors in need.
And the giving just continues as Zenoss Cares has many other dates committed to with other organizations around the Austin area. We're thrilled that the employees are so willing and engaging in the efforts that the Zenoss Cares team uncovers and suggests. It will be fun to watch where we give back and how our giving helps other in the years to come.
