Find an outreach event involving Ford Motor company? How does their participation in the event align with their stance as a business in the community? Does the company’s involvement in this outreach activity align with its mission, vision, values?
- How (or does) the company benefit from sponsoring the event? How do you think this event brings your community together? How does the community view the company sponsoring the event?
- Respond to at least one of your classmates with your perspective on their topic.
Please respond to to the post below also.
Catherine McGuire
RE: Week 8 Discussion
My selected company, AT&T, does so much to reach the public that I find it difficult to isolate just one effort as its most impactful.
Prior to the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, AT&T Labs hosted a Youth Technology Day for 50 students from Perth Amboy High School in New Jersey. Hosted in April of 2019, AT&T’s two day event featured STEM workshops, mentoring sessions, and meetings with Mazin Gilbert, Vice President of AT&T Labs, who spoke of technology innovations at AT&T Labs, and scholarship announcements for two technology and engineering high school students (AT&T, 1).
AT&T has been a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion for many years, one such advocacy has been for women’s inclusion in the workplace and GIFT, girls in future of technologies. In October of 2017, Women of AT&T (Bay Area Chapter) sponsored a STEM theme event which was attended by 100 middle and high school girls, the goal was to expose young women to new technologies and career opportunities. In the Girl’s Who Code’s Summer Immersion Program, girls are able to spend the summer learning programming languages, such as Python, C++, markup languages for web development like HTML and CSS, and more (Carter, 2).
As recently as June of this year, the AT&T Foundation contributed $25,000 to the University of Alabama in order to fund scholarships for students pursuing degrees in Information and Technology fields during the 2021-2022 academic year. These scholarships are the first of its kind to specifically support IT students in the School of Computing (Crawford, 3).
So how does AT&T benefit from sponsoring these events? AT&T gains positive public exposure by supporting students and youths in their journey towards gaining a quality education and selecting innovative career paths. AT&T introduces itself as a company, an explorer of technology, and employer to these youths at a formidable age, therefore heightening the possibility of recruiting these youths to positions with the company. These events bring the community together by assembling students into groups which might not have associated if not for the efforts of AT&T philanthropy. Parents, the community, society notices when a company goes out of its way to enable others, and the community reflects warmly upon said company.
AT&T has adopted the core values of:
Live True
Think Big
Pursue Excellence
Inspire Imagination
Be There
Stand for Equality
Embrace Freedom
Make a Difference
The company has been transparent in its pursuit of diversity, equity, inclusion, social responsibility, and ethics & compliance. I truly think that AT&T’s outreach events have aligned its actions along with its vision and values.
Sources:
AT&T Staff. 2021. Collaborations and Outreach. Https://about.att.com/sites/labs_research/collaborations.
Brienna Carter. August 30, 2016. Proud to be a Girl Who Codes. Https://about.att.com/innovationblog/girls_who_code.
Lance Crawford. June 15, 2021. AT&T Foundation Gives $25,000 for IT Scholarships. Https://www.southalabama.edu/departments/publicrelations/pressreleases/061521attscholarships.html.
– Catherine
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