My company's social responsibility

[Gadget (fmr Marine)]

I am fortunate to have a good job, and inspired by the hardest working people I have had the pleasure to be associated with....please accept my humblest apologies, if this is not the best place to put this information, but I do think that it is a fantastic, direct, and personally important message.

We have many people in our offices, and warehouses that have been affected personally, and we are reminded daily of the ongoing suffering.

In the wake of the catastrophic earthquake that left more than 1.2 million homeless in Haiti, CHAUVET®, a company founded by and employing many Haitian Americans, has teamed up with the charity organization Food For The Poor in an effort to raise funds to build homes in the devastated Caribbean nation.

Please watch this short video made by our VP, Berenice Chauvet....

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Our immediate goal is to finance the construction of 20 homes for displaced families. Each home costs an average of just $2,600 for a family of four. Albert and Berenice Chauvet have kicked off this campaign with a $10,000 donation and CHAUVET® has also pledged to match the first $10,000 in contributions from donors like you.
Your tax deductible contribution is deeply appreciated.

Please take a moment to make a difference. Visit www.foodforthepoor.org/chauvet.

Thank you!

[Jeff]

No Offense Gadget, I do appreciate what ya are doing here, but I travel our country, the United States Of America, And I personally have seen many homeless right here in our own back yard, and with Obama in office this is only going to get worse, I am all for Helping the needy in our Country and once that is done then we may help other nations .

But it seems the only ones getting help here are those that don't help themselves in the first place, We have companies closing everyday to me that is who we ought to be helping

Two days before Christmas Arrow trucking closed the doors, 1400 people stranded all over the country, they were told to take there trucks to the local frieghtliner dealer if they had enough fuel, there fuel cards were all shut off so they couldn't get home, our Government did not help them get home nor are they helping them now, unemployment pays for groceries not the bills these hard working Americans had, I say had cause many have lost everything already, they were struggling in this economy just to pay there bills

Again I understand what y'all are doing and in different times I would be right there next to y'all to help, but these are the days of the messiah, we have to take care of our own

[Gadget (fmr Marine)]

WE are a growing US company who is hiring, and expanding internationally. Owned by Haitian American immigrants who work harder than most people I know in the private sector.

Thanks for your concern (or lack of it....) Charity starts at home, and my home has been directly affected by the catastrophe. I know I can make a difference, and many others, as well.


Never look down on someone unless you are helping them up.

[Jeff]

I have worked with all types of hard workers, the hardest probably being a group of Polish guys in NYC that I watched unload a 48 ' flat bed double stacked with roofing rolls in under 2 hours, that doesn't make me any more incentive of the trouble we have here in America, As I said when we become a country that can stand on its own two feet again I say then and only then should we be running around the world helping fix others problems, so I guess if you worked for a company owned by Italians you would say the hell with Haiti ?
Or I have to wonder what ya did for the tsunami survivors or how about the people in New Orleans?

AS for your crack or a try at a crack about my signature you said it yourself Charity starts at home , my home is America, yours is Haiti , again if my home was stable I would say lets help all we can, but it isn't , so I will live by your words, charity starts at home

I also noticed not one word of the 1400 people that lost there jobs two days before Christmas :eek: Hell man some of them might of been Haitian, but the hell with them they don't work with you, you are a real good Samaritan :eek:

[Kathianne]

You are both right. I know I posted some here about my students efforts to help with Haiti Relief. We sent over $2k, which is a lot of money from a school of under 100 families, hit hard by the economy.

Jeff has a valid point about 'charity begins at home.' Problem today is that it's going to be very hard to raise charitable donations when the government is doing 'so much.' That the help they claim to be giving is a flim flam scheme is missed by most. Good people do not 'rip off' the system, which means they get less than is presumed. They are not driving caddys and they are not wearing furs. They look for jobs that are not there.

Others, maybe more than 1/2 have taken reduction in benefits, hours, even salaries. They feel the axe that is poised to fall. There is nothing being done to address the problems, in fact the spending by the government is making things worse.

Interesting that both of you have mentioned that immigrants tend to get right to business and succeed. Both mention how hard working and deserving of success, earned through their own sweat and sacrifices. Sort of harkens back to what I said in another thread about not blaming those different than us. It's what has grown this country and made is so strong in the past.

[Gadget (fmr Marine)]

I am a HUGE fan of Jeffersonian philosophies, and think we can learn much form them, by putting county first, and then those of our geographical neighbors:


"I hope [all will see and] promote... the advantages of a cordial fraternization among all the American nations, and the advantage of their coalescing in an American system of policy, totally independent of and unconnected with that of Europe. The day is not distant when we may formally require a meridian of partition through the ocean which separates the two hemispheres, on the hither side of which no European gun shall ever be heard, nor an American on the other; and when, during the rage of the eternal wars of Europe, the lion and the lamb within our regions shall lie down together in peace... The principles of society there and here... are radically different, and I hope no American patriot will ever lose sight of the essential policy of interdicting in the seas and territories of both Americas the ferocious and sanguinary contests of Europe." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1820. ME 15:262

Helping to keep our neighbors fed and clothed help protect us in the long term.

Thank you all for taking a look, and on behalf of my American friends and their families my deepest appreciation.