CSR Snapshot: Syniverse Helps Brighten the Holidays for Needy Families in Tampa

Synergy’s CSR Snapshot features some of the most recent corporate social responsibility activities we’ve undertaken to make a positive impact in our communities.

What was the activity?
On Dec. 14, for the seventh year in a row, the Syniverse Marketing team at our Tampa office spent an afternoon distributing food, toys, and other items to needy families at the Holiday Tent of Metropolitan Ministries, a Tampa charity.

What organization did the activity support?
Metropolitan Ministries provides care for the homeless in the Tampa Bay area and those at risk of becoming homeless through services that alleviate suffering, promote dignity, and instill self-sufficiency. The organization offers services to ease hunger, prevent homelessness, and provide assistance for enabling self-sufficiency and transitioning back into the community. During the November and December holiday season, Metropolitan Ministries goes into overdrive and sets up its Holiday Tent, which serves over 18,000 families with food, toys, and other needed items, and recruits the help of more than 10,000 volunteers.

How many Syniverse employees participated?
Fifteen colleagues lent a hand. This is the seventh year in a row that we’ve organized this team, and we typically assemble a group of 10 or more volunteers each year.

What did the Syniverse team do?
We worked a three-hour shift where we divided up into groups that helped serve the guests at the tent in various ways. The tent is organized into large sections that offer food, toys and other goods, and guests can browse through each section and select a specified amount of free items donated by the community to take to their families. Other parts of the tent include registration lines, hospitality areas, drop-off points for donated goods, and sorting and storage spaces for the constantly incoming goods. To support this great cause, we lent a hand to . . .

• Greet guests and provide them with special food items, like turkeys, hams, or chickens, and bag and place these and other gift items on their carts.
• Load all guests’ food and gifts from their carts on to wagons, and deliver the items to guests’ cars.
• Direct guests and volunteers to appropriate spaces in the parking lots as they arrived and departed.

In addition to our team’s half-day, Syniverse as a company also made a big contribution to Metropolitan Ministries this holiday season by holding a food drive from late October to early November. Our Employee Association encouraged colleagues to drop off food items in our lobby that were most needed by families for the Thanksgiving and December holidays. Many of us pitched in with canned goods and helped contribute meals for a lot of needy families in the Tampa Bay area.

What was the single most rewarding part of this activity?
It’s hard to choose just one, but overall I would say being reminded that personally volunteering your service to a charity can be so much more powerful and gratifying than just making a monetary donation. We were able to witness the appreciation and enthusiasm of many guests as we helped load their items. At the same time, we were able to share in the joy and gratefulness that these guests feel in knowing how much the community cares about them and their families, and that they will enjoy a wonderful holiday celebration with their loved ones. It’s an honor for our team to be able to help with this worthy effort each year, and one we hope to continue for many years to come.