Togheter for Haiti

Following the earthquake that struck Haiti, Edison launched an awareness raising campaign addressed to its employees to finance the urgent relocation of homeless Haitian children, in collaboration with  ANPIL . In just a few weeks after the earthquake, Edison and Edipower employees has raised sufficient funds to relocate 100 children from the tents in the refugee camps of Port au Prince to ANPIL’s Hospitality Center in Port de Paix, where the children can receive education and love. In addition, the children received a thorough medical visit and were vaccinated against cholera.

Edison gave its employees an opportunity to serve as volunteers at the Hospitality Center (in June, teams of properly trained volunteers traveled to Haiti every 15 days; the period of volunteer service was treated as special paid leave and the Company paid all expenses). The volunteer teams worked alongside the local staff in all of the activities needed to care for the children and operate the Center and are the authors of the “Together for Haiti” blog (www.edisongeneration.it), created to record the impressions of the volunteers and provide a venue for sharing such an important human experience.

Within the context of the European Employee Volunteering Awards, Fondazione Sodalitas (Italy’s partner for the awards) selected Together for Haiti as Italy’s project in the Innovation category. The European Employee Volunteering Awardsis organized by Business in the Community, an English organization that serves as a reference point  for corporate sustainability, in collaboration with the European Commission. In March 2011, the Together for Haiti project was relaunched with the establishment of a work group for the construction of a renewable-source system that will make the Center energy independent.