iCare Blog

Last night Jim Stevens of Gifts to Give hosted a remarkable dinner attended by over a hundred people from New Bedford and surrounding towns. Most had not visited the refurbished textile mill that houses Gifts to Give. I always enjoy seeing how moved people are when they see how much is being accomplished with so little.

Gifts to Give uses volunteer labor of all ages to sort donated books, clothes and toys and put them into custom packages for kids in need. (iCare is a major sponsor.) While parents and older kids are sorting donations, littler kids as young as 2 draw custom birthday gift wrap. Just talking about this gets me choked up. You can imagine the effect it has on a kid who doesn’t usually get birthday presents to receive one with hand-drawn wrapping paper, just for them. I consider Jim a true pioneer – he has a vision and the determination to make it happen. That he does it in a way that brings people together doing work that makes them feel a part of building a stronger community makes it especially heartwarming. Last night was a magical way of seeing what he has accomplished in a short time, and a way to inspire the local community to build and sustain Jim’s dream that is becoming reality.

As with all natural disasters, the earthquake relief effort is fading from the headlines as the months pass. Because we and our employees offered some financial support through CARE, we received this report, which gives an update on what has been done and how agencies are approaching continued relief and development efforts. I thought it might be interesting for others to see what agencies are doing and how they assess their work.

Inter-Agency Real Time Evaluation of the Humanitarian Response to the Haiti Earthquake

The magnitude of the need is overwhelming, and the challenges of providing effective assistance are daunting. But that is the nature of humanitarian crises. I am glad that CARE and other agencies have such dedicated staff working so hard to help Haiti recover, and that CARE shares these reports.

For our first few years, Ipswitch didn’t lose money, but we didn’t make much either, so philanthropy was always something to think about in the future. Then, in the mid-90′s, profits started to grow and I started to think about corporate community involvement. For the next few years I continued a practice I had started to make annual personal donations separate from Ipswitch. By 1999, though, I had concluded that philanthropy could be something more than me or any individual making their own personal decisions about what non-profits to support. I realized that Ipswitch was beginning to have a voice that we could use to bring attention to the agencies that were doing good work to address important causes. I realized that we could involve Ipswitch employees in deciding where to focus our philanthropy, and encourage employees to volunteer and support their non-profit involvement. I realized we could introduce employees to giving and community involvement in ways that would enrich their lives. I realized that by building a community program we could attract employees who share our values. This all made it an easy decision to create iCare.

On Saturday 131 students and 32 adults gathered at Gifts to Give in New Bedford to do service in memory of 9/11.  Eleven families, the Marion Boy and Girl Scouts, Youth Court kids, Trinity Academy students and the Gifts to Give student leadership council and students from seven area high schools processed a ton of donations, filled gift orders, harvested vegetables from the garden, tended to the pumpkin patch, picked up litter in our neighborhood and the Trinity students unveiled a mural from their summer service learning project to identify and interview a local hero – Sister Rose Gallipoli.

Ipswitch sponsors Gifts to Give as part of our iCare program. They have a wonderful mission of bringing a true cross-section of society together to learn about service and improve the lives of kids in need.