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Home > About Us > Corporate Citizenship > | |||||||
| Building Teams Benefits the Community July 2006
Brainstorming fresh and fun teambuilding activities is always a challenge. Last fall when MITRE's Information Discovery and Understanding department was searching for some out-of-the ordinary teambuilding activities that would get them outside to enjoy the autumn weather, they decided to try volunteering. "It's nice to help somebody besides yourself every once in a while," says Andrea Jensenius, a senior artificial intelligence engineer in the department. "Plus, I spend a lot of time sedentary at my desk, so it's nice to get out and do something." Fairfax County's Riparian Buffer Restoration project to plant trees at 40 sites throughout the county provided a perfect opportunity for the team. A riparian buffer is the vegetated land next to a stream or river that serves as a protective filter. Riparian buffers shield water against pollutants, provide habitat for wildlife, help prevent stream bank erosion, and reduce flooding by decreasing storm-water runoff. Buffers range in size from 30 to 300 feet wide, and restoring them includes removing nonnative plants, adding native plants, and realigning streams. In addition to benefiting the ecosystem, restoration adds to the enjoyment of park visitors because parks with riparian buffers are healthier and have more wildlife. This past November, Jensenius, Dan Loehr, Adam McLeod, Jon Phillips, Alan Rubenstein, and several of their family members met in Waverly Park in Vienna, Va., on a Saturday to plant native tree species near a stream. The group broke into teams of two that dug holes, planted trees, and covered their roots to protect them. In addition to the MITRE group, about 70 other people showed up to volunteer, which made short work of the 200 saplings planted that day. In total, volunteers planted nearly 2,000 native trees and shrubs on a total of 5.6 acres for the project last fall. The team enjoyed their first group volunteer experience so much that they quickly began planning another activity. Volunteering at the Capital Area Food Bank seemed like the perfect Thanksgiving activity, but the bank was so inundated with volunteers that the team had to wait until January for a turn assembling food packages for needy kids.
More than 56,000 children in the District of Columbia are at risk of hunger, and the Food for Kids Weekend Bag Program provides weekend food bags to 1,500 children, many of whom rely on free and reduced-cost school breakfasts and lunches for their main meals. The program distributes nutritious, kid-friendly food bags to community-based sites for children to carry home on Fridays. In January, a contingent from Information Discovery and Understanding spent the morning in a D.C. warehouse helping to assemble 720 food bags for the Food for Kids project. The bags are filled largely with misprinted, overstocked, or otherwise non-saleable grocery items donated by stores and are put together and distributed by volunteers. The MITRE participants were Lashon Booker, Sherri Condon, Jensenius, Keith Miller, Deborah Nichols, and Rubenstein. Including family members, the MITRE group totaled 14 people. Participants spent the day working in an assembly line to open bags and stuff them with items including ravioli, tuna, sweet potatoes, tortilla chips, pears, and water. Others tied the bags, assembled and packed boxes, or served as runners continually supplying the assembly line with food from palettes. "It was interesting—if unsurprising—that MITRE folks applied their skills to monitor and optimize their assembly line," observes Nichols. "I enjoyed meeting my coworkers' family members and working together with everyone for an excellent cause." Miller agrees. "It was interesting—and even a little fun—to see on a really simple level the workflow, bottlenecks, and effects of re-organization, while doing something that we could all feel good about," he explains.
Page last updated: August 10, 2006 | Top of page |
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