Promega in Action is an opportunity for employees at Promega headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin to use paid time to volunteer. Employees can apply for a grant of up to 40 hours to work for the charity or organization of their choice. In return, employees are asked to document their interactions and present their experiences and insights to their colleagues.
To date, 33 organizations have benefitted from the Promega in Action program, including local programs such as Madison Area Food Pantry Gardens and global programs such as SizaBantwana in South Africa. Employees' involvement with these groups often does not end when paid volunteer hours are exhausted. Many continue to actively volunteer, as well as recruit others to the cause. Promega keeps an updated database of organizations where employees have served, and many employees who are not Promega in Action participants will do volunteer work for these causes on their own time.
Here’s how one 2019 Promega in Action participant described her experience:
“Madison Area Food Pantry Gardens produce 100,000+ pounds of food each year that’s grown and donated to local food pantries, all through the work of volunteer gardeners. Most of my time was spent leading middle- and high-school-aged youth groups who were volunteering over their summer break. Some kids had helped in their home gardens, but a lot had never planted or maintained a garden before. Later in the season I recruited some of my teammates at Promega to help harvest in the garden! A single hour of volunteer time equates to about 80 servings of food donated to the food pantry. Between my time spent throughout the summer, and my teammates’ time when they joined me, the Promega in Action program contributed almost 2,000lbs of food this growing season.
Being able to spend a few hours a week at the garden, plus working with kids and my coworkers to grow healthy, fresh food for people who need it most, has been so rewarding! I’m very grateful for the Promega in Action opportunity. I look forward to finding more ways to help the gardens in the future, and I hope to organize more opportunities for my team to volunteer at the garden.”
-Heather Lynch, Production Scientist
