It's traditional in many European countries to count down the days until Christmas with an advent calendar. Every day, it’s time to open a new window on the calendar, revealing a festive scene – or a little treat like a piece of chocolate. It’s something that is guaranteed to put a smile on the face of every child – and most adults, too.
At Fujitsu, we love the magic of Christmas and wanted to capture some of that festive spirit and give back to the local community. So, we asked some of our brightest people to suggest local good causes that we could support as 2020 draws to a close.
Just like anyone who gets involved in supporting good causes at the grassroots level, I’d noticed that the technology used by local charities and good causes is often quite old and out of date. Organizations are making do with old and outdated computers – usually because they’re spending every cent of their money supporting their cause.
That’s why I was delighted to sign off on the proposal from our talent team that we’d take a bunch of refurbished Fujitsu notebooks and put them to good use. We started with 24 and then decided to extend the campaign throughout the entire month of December.
We began by buying back 31 notebooks from our partner AfB, Europe’s largest non-profit IT company. AfB creates jobs for people with disabilities by refurbishing and remarketing used IT and mobile devices, including the certified deletion of old data.
The results are notebooks that are almost as good as new, run Windows 10 Professional and come with a one-year guarantee. These are all recent model Fujitsu LIFEBOOK notebooks, so I knew they would be up to the task.
And I’m proud to say that we’re delighted with the response from our chosen causes. We’re calling it 31 Days of Smiles, thanks to the overwhelmingly positive responses we’ve received. You can see these smiles for yourself in a collection of LinkedIn posts from my colleagues – and I’ll post a video of my donation a little closer to Christmas.
If you’d like to see the handovers, look no further than LinkedIn. Our 31 days of giveaways started in Munich, Germany, at the Kinderhaus AtemReich gemeinnützige GmbH. This center looks after children who can breathe only with the aid of a ventilator and need interdisciplinary intensive care.
Among the causes we’re also supporting are the Estonian Union for Child Welfare; the Dutch foundation het Gehandicapte Kind (vh NSGK), which provides care for disabled children; the Jose Carreras Foundation, which supports people with leukemia, and the Zentrum für Hörgeschädigte (a school for hard of hearing children) in Augsburg, Germany.
The campaign is running now, so stay tuned for the remainder of the 31 days of smiles.
