When I was six years old, I was the “Toy Store Tantrum” kid. Whenever I was taken into a mall, department store or virtually any establishment with some semblance of a toy section, I’d turn into the child from hell, and Star Wars action figures and Nerf guns would have to be pried from my white-knuckled little fingers.
Then one day, my mom, a lifelong teacher, discovered the cure. Bless her heart, after 12 rounds of wrestling an Obi-Wan Kenobi figurine from me at Wal-Mart, she had finally decided enough was enough. So, she pulled me into the car, tightened my seatbelt and told me she was taking me to play with one of her first graders, Corey. As we rolled through traffic, she described for me the boy I was about to meet—how his clothes were always raggedy and too big for him; how he loved books so much that she caught him taking them home with him, saying he didn’t have any of his own; how he’d hoard cafeteria food in the pockets of his torn sweatpants because “auntie didn’t go to the store”; how he’d miss school for weeks on end and how, on the days he did show up, he’d loiter in the hallways after the exit bell because he didn’t want to go home. Even with a six-year-old brain, those images struck me.
When we pulled up outside a one-story condo with a cracked driveway and broken blinds in the windows, she told me to get out. I sat frozen. “Go on. He’s inside. Just ring the doorbell,” she said. I didn’t move. I just thought about Corey, what he might be doing in that condo and about, in that moment, how far from home I felt. After a few minutes, my mom drove us away in silence, but I never stopped thinking about Corey.
Children like Corey are why we started the Access Marketing Company volunteer program. Whether by running a food drive for a local food bank or building homes for Habitat Humanity, we hope to ensure that the Coreys of the world get fed, their families stick together and they have a shot at one of the most precious things a human being can have—a childhood.
About the AMC Volunteer Program
Once a quarter, AMC donates a day of paid work time and our team gives a day’s worth of hard work to serve a Denver-area non-profit. The program has helped us forge a deeper relationship with the community we call our home. One quarter, we spent a day sorting and packaging food donations at Parker Task Force/Food Bank, but we’ve also donated our time to the Food Bank of the Rockies and Habitat for Humanity and run our own ultra-competitive food drives, the most recent of which resulted in our employees donating 1000 lbs. of food to the Parker Task Force (that’s a record, btw).
As marketers, we’re not curing cancer. What we do is important for our clients and should bring us some degree of fulfillment, but there are FAR more important causes in the world that also deserve our energy and attention. That’s why volunteering will always be an important component of AMC.
Where should we volunteer next quarter? Give us a recommendation!
