Each year, Georgia-Pacific supports several local and national service organizations. The ServiceForce, Georgia-Pacific's employee volunteer groups, often enables local activation in support of these national programs.
Many Georgia-Pacific programs meet critical community needs for housing and education, and in one case, an award-winning Georgia-Pacific program in Turkey supported community hygiene education.
Here are examples of initiatives that center around the company's key investment areas— Entrepreneurship, Education, Environment and community Enrichment.
Youth Entrepreneurs of Atlanta
Fully funded by Georgia-Pacific, Youth Entrepreneurs of Atlanta is an educational program that seeks to teach high school students the fundamentals of free enterprise and essentials for entering the business world. The program was launched in August 2006 at Benjamin E. Mays and Southside High Schools. The program provides students with hands-on training and real-life examples of entrepreneurial success from local community business leaders.
ServiceForce Employee Volunteers
Originally formed to help Atlanta host the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games,
Georgia-Pacific’s employee volunteer program is comprised of employees, retirees
and their families. This group is committed to making a difference by volunteering
for company-sponsored projects as well as individual activities in their
communities.
ServiceForce projects focus on the Georgia-Pacific Foundation’s strategic investment areas as
well as other community needs. ServiceForce has 15 facility-based chapters across
the United States.- Currently, approximately 2,700 employees participate as members of ServiceForce.
- In 2006, ServiceForce employee volunteers logged more than 50,000 volunteer hours on projects, both corporate and individual, in their community.
- In 2006, Georgia-Pacific coordinated more than 100 group volunteer activities in communities throughout the country.
Georgia-Pacific Supported the City of Atlanta's Effort to Bring the King Papers Home
In June of 2006, thousands of Dr. Martin Luther King’s personal papers, manuscripts, books and notes of were purchased and assembled into a collection that is owned and directed by Atlanta’s Morehouse College, Dr. King’s alma mater.
The effort to acquire the collection was spearheaded by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and included a broad group of civic, education and business leaders. Georgia-Pacific was among the major Atlanta-based corporations to join the early group of supporters.
“The collection will provide everyone an opportunity to gain a unique appreciation of Dr. King’s work—his preparation and selfless service,” said Curley Dossman, Jr., president of the Georgia-Pacific Foundation. “ The Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection will become a treasured part of American history. We are glad to be among a select group that ensured these works will be preserved to inspire generations to come.”
Gathered from items developed between 1946 and 1968, the collection is believed to be the most extensive collection of artifacts belonging to one of the greatest world leaders of the 20th century. Included are more than 10,000 items, ranging from handwritten notes and theological works to drafts of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and his Nobel Peace Prize addresses.
The collection will be used for research by scholars and is publicly accessible through partnerships with the City of Atlanta and other organizations. The collection’s first major exhibit was at the Atlanta History Center in January 2007.
Keep America Beautiful
Georgia Pacific’s Sparkle® Paper Towels supported the efforts for the 2006 Great American Cleanup, the signature event of Keep America Beautiful®, the nation’s largest volunteer-based community action and education organization. One of three kickoff events for the Great American Cleanup was hosted by the State of Mississippi with efforts focused on restoring areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Komen for the Cure
Since 2004,
Georgia-Pacific has supported Susan G. Komen for
the Cure (formerly Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation)—a global leader in the
fight against breast cancer. Georgia-Pacific’s
Quilted Northern Ultra® brand is a national sponsor of Komen for
the Cure and the Race for the Cure® series, raising funds and awareness
for the fight against breast cancer.
The Georgia-Pacific Bucket Brigade™
This national
Georgia-Pacific program recognizes the contributions of community and rural fire departments across
the country in communities surrounding Georgia-Pacific facilities. The program supports firefighters
with:
- Product and cash donations;
- Volunteers, to help fill the needs of firefighting units; and
- Printed and online material for safety education in local schools.
Since 2006, the Bucket Brigade has provided more than $200,000 in grants to about 30 volunteer fire and rescue units across the country. Funded by participating Georgia-Pacific facilities and the Georgia-Pacific Foundation, the grants help protect thousands of residents in Georgia-Pacific communities. More information on the program is available here.
Feed The Children
Georgia-Pacific provides hands-on support for Feed The Children, an international, nonprofit relief organization that delivers food, medicine, clothing and other necessities to individuals, children and families who lack these essentials due to famine, war, poverty or natural disaster. During the holidays, Georgia-Pacific employees signed on to help Feed The Children bring some much needed holiday cheer to hundreds of families in need. The employees at the consumer products mill in Crossett, Ark., for example, added Angel Soft&® bath tissue and Sparkle® paper towels to 800 care packages of non-perishable food items provided by Feed The Children. For Thanksgiving, the employees distributed the packages to hundreds of low-income families in the surrounding area. Separately, employees in Naheola, Ala., Cedar Springs, Ga., and Atlanta also lent a helping hand to ensure hundreds of deserving families in their community had a good holiday.
Habitat for Humanity
Georgia-Pacific employees across the country
help give families a strong foundation and new opportunities through Habitat for
Humanity, an international organization that builds homes for low-income families. Each year for the last 14 years Georgia-Pacific employees have built a home.
HomeAid America
Georgia-Pacific is a dedicated supporter of HomeAid, a leading national non-profit provider and builder of housing for the homeless. While Georgia-Pacific began by donating building products for HomeAid projects, we expanded our partnership with a $250,000 donation to help construct the New Orleans Family Mission Center in collaboration with the National Association of Home Builders. A portion of the funds will be used to develop a sustainable "green" building model to construct housing facilities for temporarily homeless individuals and families across the U.S. In addition to donations of Georgia-Pacific Plytanium® plywood, Georgia-Pacific supplied DensArmor Plus® paperless interior drywall that features an innovative moisture-resistant core and paperless facers that can reduce the potential for mold growth—an important need in high-moisture and coastal climates. Georgia-Pacific executives also provide leadership on HomeAid’s national and Atlanta board of directors.
School Partnerships
Among our partner schools are Anderson Elementary School in Crossett, Ark.; Arcadia Elemetary School in Toledo, Ore.; Kelley Smith Elementary School in Palatka, Fla.; Brookneal Elementary School in Brookneal, Va.; Marion Franklin High School in Columbus, Ohio; and M. Agnes Jones Elementary School in Atlanta, Ga. Through Youth Entrepreneurs of Atlanta, Georgia-Pacific also partners with Benjamin E. Mays, Southside, Frederick Douglass, Henry W. Grady and Booker T. Washington High Schools.
Keystone Science School
The Georgia-Pacific Foundation makes tuition grants to middle-school science teachers to attend the Keystone Science School’s Key Issues Institute in Colorado. In this intensive summer program, teachers study environmental issues, participate in workshops and share experiences designed to strengthen and energize their environmental science instruction when they return to the classroom. Georgia-Pacific is the largest corporate sponsor of the Keystone program. In fact, since 1996, the Foundation has enabled 100 teachers from Georgia-Pacific communities to attend the institute.
In-Kind Donations
Over the years, our in-kind donations have helped to build houses for thousands of families and assisted communities recover from natural disasters. We often provide in-kind support through other organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, Red Cross, Feed The Children, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Salvation Army and HomeAid.
Some recent highlights:- Ronald McDonald Houses across the country continue to receive annual donations of Georgia-Pacific consumer products to help bring the comforts of home to seriously ill children and their families.
- In 2007, Feed The Children provided more than 55,000 thousand cases of Georgia-Pacific's bath tissue, paper towels, and cutlery and plates, to organizations responding to natural disasters in California, Florida, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas.
- In August 2007, national non-profit provider of housing, HomeAid, announced the opening of the New Orleans Mission Family Center. The building is the first post-Hurricane Katrina LEED-registered building for the transitionally homeless in New Orleans. Georgia-Pacific donated its environmentally sound paperless DensArmor Plus® wallboard that is used throughout the center.
Significant Past Support
The Nature Conservancy
The Georgia-Pacific Foundation contributed $3 million to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in support of environmental conservation. In addition, Georgia-Pacific has worked with TNC on many other conservation efforts, helping the group with significant land acquisition and protection efforts at the state level.
Ebenezer Baptist Church Restoration
Georgia-Pacific took the lead in raising more than $390,000 from area businesses for the restoration and preservation of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., grew up and later preached. The Georgia-Pacific Foundation donated $100,000 to this project.