Feature Story

By Leslie T. O'Neill

December 21, 2007 - Around the world, the winter holidays symbolize the notion of giving: giving of time, of compassion, and of self. At Sun, the holiday spirit of giving is put into action every day of the year by employees who celebrate Divali, Thanksgiving, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the winter solstice. In 2007, Sun furthered its commitment to global citizenship with its Innovate, Act, and Share strategy, encouraging employees to give back to the communities where they live and work through a variety of volunteer programs and initiatives.

"We create volunteer opportunities and partnerships that drive increased participation on the network, especially where technology can really make a difference. This is in direct alignment with Sun's strategy and our cause to eliminate the digital divide," explains Larry Nelson, who, as Director of Global Citizenship, oversees the activities of the Sun Foundation, which has contributed Sun technology and services to schools and non-profits since 1990. The organization also enables employees to lend their time, expertise, and resources to the initiatives they are most passionate about.

Hundreds of Sun workers participated in Sun's volunteer programs this year, contributing over 13,000 hours of time to more than 200 schools, non-profit organizations and charitable institutions worldwide. Also, Sun employees made more than $1,350,000 in charitable donations around the world in the 2007 fiscal year.

"Sun employees are volunteering the talents they were hired for," says Ingrid Van Den Hoogen, senior vice president of Brand, Global Communications and Integrated Marketing and a board member of the Sun Foundation.

"Not only does this maximize their benefit in the community, it showcases how Sun employees are helping to close the gap between those who benefit from technology and those who do not. Volunteerism is one of the threads that weaves the global Sun family together," she says.

Innovate

One of Sun's key corporate values is being innovative. Nowhere is that more evident than in employees' efforts this year to develop new tools for driving volunteer activities, creating new channels for communications among Sun's global citizens, and pioneering new programs and partnerships that work toward achieving the cause of enabling everyone to benefit from technology.

Critical to Sun's efforts to eliminate the digital divide is engaging with members of the community outside of Sun. To this end, Sun created the Friends of the Foundation group on Facebook. The Friends of the Foundation began as an internal community for Sun's employees, but when it moved to Facebook, it was opened to the public — and in just six weeks, more than 600 members have joined this network to share ideas and collaborate on ways to increase participation on the network. Sun is also using Wiki pages to generate momentum for a variety of causes, including Curriki, a global education and learning community dedicated to developing and distributing K-12 curricula.

Project Open Doors, a program Sun started four years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil, invites high school students from communities around the world to visit local Sun campuses, where they learn about Sun technology, see the types of careers possible at an IT company, and get a sense of how they might fit into the high-tech world. The program encourages the ambitions of young people, assuring them that whatever their background, opportunity awaits students who participate on the network. This year, Sun extended the Project Open Door initiative from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Menlo Park, California, and Somerset, New Jersey.

In India, a team of Sun volunteers launched a new tool for tracking volunteer activity, contacting members of a project team, identifying volunteer opportunities, and more. Spearheaded by volunteers Renjith Aryaveedu and Atishay Kumar, the team recognized a need among Sun's employees and then developed the tool on their own time. The core volunteer team in India also included Vidya Srinivasan, Maheshkumar B G, Ramesh Naidu, and Venkatesh Deshpande.

"The volunteer tool is totally seamless. It was architected to fit into Sun's existing workflow — it's streamlined and elegant. And it's a great example of Sun's employees putting our core values into action," says Nelson.

In addition to developing a tool that facilitated community involvement, the Indian team also helped set up a full-fledged computer library in the Bakul Foundation Children's Library. Sun donated monitors and servers and the volunteers gave of their time and talent to develop the lab, which provides children with free access to multimedia resources and helps to close the digital divide.

Sun recognizes that it takes more than time and talent to make the world a better place — it takes money. This year Sun made it even easier for employees to make charitable donations to the institutions of their choice — groups large and small that support local, national, and international causes — with a new online tool for its matching funds program. Nelson believes that this tool is having a positive impact on the number of donations Sun's generous global citizens have made since the tool's launch. For the $1.4 million that generous employees worldwide donated in the 2007 fiscal year, Sun Foundation also donated $1.5 million worldwide to employees' preferred causes.

Act

To spotlight employees' efforts in their local communities, Sun sponsors an annual Worldwide Volunteer Week — this year, more than 1,300 volunteers participated in 100 projects in 13 countries on 27 different Sun campuses. The Sun Foundation donated a $1,000 grant to the favorite charities of the that groups that particularly represented the spirit of giving. Team Edmonton, Canada, worked again with Habitat for Humanity to build a home for a low-income family. Team Belo Horizonte, Brazil, inspired 67 percent of employees at their site to participate in a blood drive. And Team Santiago, Chile, worked with Shelter of Hope to take children on a museum tour and then host a feast at the agency.

Share

Also core to Sun's values is openness, and to that end, Sun's Global Citizenship group shares information and tools that can empower individuals and change the course of education, healthcare, politics, commerce, and global warming.

Most recently, a group of engineers in San Francisco formed a pilot chapter of Engineers without Borders, a nonprofit organization that works to implement sustainable engineering projects while also training internationally responsible engineers around the world.

"They are dedicating their expertise to a project that will help utilize technology in a unique and impactful way," says Nelson.

In addition, Sun collaborates with local communities on a global basis. To include online communities in the spirit of giving, Sun is again conducting its annual Global Giving Drive, a two-month-long annual tradition that enables the public to also donate funds. By clicking through the Drive's Web site — securely hosted by the Aidmatrix Foundation, a Sun partner in global citizenship — you can contribute to organizations that are working to end hunger, build shelter, provide micro-finance, and more.

The Sun Foundation chose ten non-profit groups to benefit from the 2007 Global Giving Drive: Aidmatrix, Architecture for Humanity, Curriki, Direct Relief International, Engineers Without Borders, The Global Fund for Women, The Hunger Project, Kiva, Mercy Corps, and Second Harvest Food Bank.

For more information, go to http://www.sun.com/globalcitizenship