Canon recently celebrated its Mid-Year Kick Off sales conference with a special morning devoted to making a contribution to the underprivileged through its involvement with the inspirational charity organisation OzHarvest.
Mike Boyle, senior general manager of Canon Professional Print, explains: “At Canon we are fortunate to come to work each day in a culture that supports us making a positive difference to our customers and to bettering the print industry. But that is the only the beginning, we also have responsibility as Canon employees to make a contribution that extends to the greater community and enriching people’s lives.”
For this reason Canon decided to get involved and take part with OzHarvest, the only food rescue organisation that rescues all types of food in Australia. It is a simple, effective service and is provided free to both food donor and recipient. The food is picked up and delivered the same day using refrigerated vans with a changing daily schedule.
OzHarvest was established in November 2004 and with one van the organisation delivered 4,000 meals in their first month of operation. Now OzHarvest has grown to 21 vans that operate in Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and the Gold Coast. Since inception in 2004, OzHarvest has delivered more than 28 million meals to people in need.
Each week OzHarvest collects over 42 tonnes of good food that would otherwise end up in landfill from more than 2,000 food donors. The organisation delivers this food to more than 500 charities that feed people in need. Through the NEST program (Nutrition Education Sustenance Training) OzHarvest educate disadvantaged communities about nutrition and healthy eating, providing valuable life skills to these communities.
Canon took part in ‘Cooking for a Cause’ an OzHarvest program that connects and engages the corporate community through volunteer offerings of high nutrition meals to be delivered to charities that feed the disadvantaged, homeless, youth people-in-crisis and vulnerable Australians in need.
As part of the program Canon employees learned how to cook nutritious gourmet meals from the talented and dedicated volunteer chefs at OzHarvest. The Canon crew had a great time while bonding as a team over a shared goal to produce hundreds of meals for people desperately in need. By the afternoon Canon staff had managed to produce over 600 quality meals to be delivered to charity organisations, which according to OzHarvest was a great effort.
“It was a privilege for our people to be involved with OzHarvest and be given an opportunity to make a contribution back to the community in this way. What OzHarvest has achieved as an organisation should inspire us as individuals and even more so as a team that our actions can indeed make a positive difference, whether it’s with the wider community or with our customers,” Mike Boyle told the Canon team at the conclusion of the day’s event.