This is Tegria’s second Giving Together campaign since our launch last October, and as I reflect on the year and the stories my colleagues from across Tegria are offering about their work and contributions to their communities, I want to share a few observations.

One is just the sheer magnitude and breadth of the needs in our communities and the opportunities to respond. When we started our giving program last year, we focused on support for frontline caregivers and their families, and this remains a priority for us. We are also seeing more food scarcity and requests for hunger relief, and are doing what we can to respond. And, as we grow in our engagement with Seattle’s South Park neighborhood through our partnership with the Seattle Kraken’s One Roof Foundation, we’re learning more about community health and how to improve it.

I’m proud of the ways my colleagues have leaned in. As part of our cross-company Giving Together campaign, we share stories of causes we support and the time, money and materials we offer to make a difference. I want to feature a few of them here – certainly as a demonstration of the kind of people I work with every day, at Tegria and across healthcare, but also to showcase the many opportunities to get involved, and hopefully inspire readers to do more. These are anonymized quotes, but otherwise verbatim, with links to the organizations:

• Organization: Meta House
  “Our whole family packed lunches for Meta House. The kids even drew pictures and wrote inspirational messages on the lunch bags to brighten their days. We all found a way to use our talents to serve!” 

• Organization: The San Diego LGBT Community Center
  “Isolation can be a relentless enemy to LGBTQ seniors, but those who find their way to The Center find powerful allies. The Center provides a community of new friends for seniors. The peer group is aimed for LGBTQ community members 50 and older, many looking for something new and challenging … and they find it here.”

• Organization: The CUP of Empowerment Coalition
  “The CUP caters to the community in the 90062 area of Los Angeles. I am the events coordinator. We donate spring baskets to the kids; we have a craft day/movie night every two months; we adopt families to provide holiday meals; and we also serve “Love in a Bag” lunches to the homeless every second Saturday. We have a “Warm and Fuzzy” every quarter where we serve hot meals to the community, and we have “A Day of Dignity” every Wednesday where we invite the homeless to come and shower. Afterwards, they are served a meal and given a clean pair of clothes from items donated.”

• Organization: Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern WI
  “Second Harvest helps so many people in our area through mobile food pick-up sites, a kids’ café, and supporting all of the regional pantries. We’re proud to find small ways to support their mission and get meals to anyone who needs them, which in our area is 1 in 6 kids and 1 in 11 seniors. It’s also never too early to get kiddos involved and helping to give where we can; we passed out homemade cookies to anyone at daycare who helped us “stuff the trunk” and found items to donate from our own cupboard. He had a blast, and “Stuff the Trunk” will be an annual event moving forward!”

• Organization: Primary Children’s Hospital
  “I had my son 10 weeks early, and he had to stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. They give all the patients new blankets for their stay at the hospital. My son received several while he was there. My friend, who each year donates blankets to Primary Children’s, tries to beat the amount of blankets she donated the year before, so she depends on donations and help from anyone who wants to contribute. I donate material or money every year so all the kids can get new blankets for their hospital stay.”

As a company, Tegria also has an opportunity to boost our colleagues’ impact with a small but growing match program. We’ve also maintained a corporate gift initiative toward helping the helpers:  frontline caregivers who continue to rise to the challenge of the global pandemic. We are deeply inspired by their bravery and devotion to patient care. Tegria is again contributing to two funds supervised by Providence that respond to caregivers’ financial and behavioral health needs. The Helping Hands Fund provides emergency financial support to caregivers and the No One Cares Alone program offers mental and emotional health counseling and coaching. A link to donate to both is here.

The healthcare community is grounded in service and support for the wellbeing of others. Tegria is proud to be a small part of it, and we’ll continue to learn and grow as contributors to our communities. I invite you to join us in lifting up nonprofits everywhere and supporting their good work with your funds, time and talents.