Top Perks
Top Places to Work | Perks
WHO KNEW THAT biking to work could help save a village? Through Google’s Self-Powered Commuter program, software engineer Alan Su from the Kendall Square office and five New York “Googlers’’ paid to install a satellite dish and an Internet connection at a school in a rural area of Haiti.
The Google program converts the miles employees travel by foot, bicycle, rollerblade, skateboard, or kayak - not even wind-powered sailboats are allowed - into points toward a donation from Google to the workers’ charity of choice.
Su and his colleagues chose to give their 2,800 miles worth of points to a school in Fonds Jean Noel, and when Hurricane Gustav swung the village’s way in August 2008, the school was able to track the storm’s progress over the Internet. Before it hit, students ran into the town and warned people to leave. In the end, nearly 50 people who lived in the path of the storm were prompted to take shelter at the school.
At Vistaprint, a small-business marketing company based in Lexington, charity is also a priority for some of its workers.
Five years of service earns each worker a paid, month-long sabbatical. The month can be used for anything – one person went on an African safari – but several of the company's 550 local employees have taken advantage of the time to volunteer, in one case to help the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort, in another to work with Doctors Without Borders.
Nancy Brown, who works in quality assurance for Vistaprint, used her sabbatical to chaperone a church youth group trip to Haiti in August 2007. With 18 teenagers and a few other adults, she went to the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Cité Soleil to hold bible schools and help build a church. "It was a fantastic trip," Brown said, despite the 100-degree heat and lack of electricity. "I've never done anything that compared to it."
The good feelings continued after she returned to work. "I was tired when I left," she said. "When I came back I was more energized. I was more interested in my job."
Vistaprint benefits from it, too, said Brown, 54. "I think they get more committed employees. I think they get people that are a little bit more interesting."
When Brown's next five-year anniversary rolls around, in 2011, she’s planning to use her second sabbatical to go back to Haiti – this time, to an orphanage.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
