Guest blogger - Karine Aviv

Bio: Karine is the marketing manager at Dexterity Consulting. She previously worked at Hitachi-ID (previously M-Tech Information Technology) as the Director of Marketing. Her education background is a BA in Psychology and an MBA in Information Systems.  She lives with her husband and three daughters in Calgary.

I have three daughters, ages 10, 7 and 3.  Teaching them about the importance of community is an on-going process.  By working together with their schools as a team, we are teaching them how to be active members of the community, and that we have a responsibility to help those that are less fortunate and contribute to the common good.

I recently had the good fortune to read about a company that worked together with its clients to give back to the community.  The story really touched me and I'd like to share it with you.

WBM Office Systems, a Western Canadian company, mentors the Vincent Massey Elementary School in Saskatoon, and creates awareness through annual conferences.  The 2010/2011 school year theme is "In Motion" and to align their support to the school, WBM decided to provide bicycles to students who had never owned one before.  They wanted to do more than just donate funds.  With a crowd of C level executives and business owners, they set an example for community involvement and showed how much impact a business can have.

The day's formal agenda included the charitable activity.  The guests were asked to assemble 60 children's bicycles for students at Vincent Massey.  The bikes were purchased still in the box and then labeled with a number and the name of a child.  Each of the guests had a number on their nametag and was asked to go to the corresponding box.

In less than an hour all 60 bikes were built and safety tested.

Now comes the touching part....

The guests were unaware that al 60 children had been bused in and were waiting in an adjacent room.  The children were also not told about their bikes.  They were just told that they were representing the school.

As the guests were standing beside the bikes, wondering "what next..." they were asked to take the name off of the box, hold it up over their head, and then the children were sent in.

It was a very rewarding moment for the guests to see the faces and put names to the children whom they had just spent the last hour building a bike for.  These kids who are often categorized as "inner city" or "underprivileged" were now just "happy kids".

I hope that you were touched by this story as I was.  I also hope that I succeed in teaching my daughters the importance of being part of a larger community and doing good for others in need.