Samsung Gives City Green Day of Service

Members of the Galaxy Tablet Marketing Team (Bill Dickey, Kevin Frank, Allison Chen, Hiren Patel, HK Park and Steve Lim) were among 30 employees who spent the day volunteering with City Green during the recent Samsung Day of Service.

With the pressure and complexity of managing multi-billion dollar businesses, it can be challenging to find the time and opportunity to give back in the form of community service. That’s why the Samsung Day of Service has become such a popular initiative for individuals and teams throughout the Samsung offices across the country. For myself and my fellow members of the Galaxy Tablet Product Marketing team of the Mobile Computing division, Day of Service offers not just an opportunity to invest our time and energy into worthwhile causes, but also the rare occasion to merge business benefit with personal passion.

When Day of Service was announced, we decided that we could provide a platform for valuable team-building while simultaneously making a positive impact in the communities where we live and work. After canvassing the larger Tablet Marketing team, Bill Dickey, Allison Chen, Hiren Patel, HK Park, Steve Lim and I elected to join forces at the City Green urban farm in Clifton, New Jersey, a non-profit dedicated to establishing community gardens and increasing access to healthy, local food.

Despite being a lifelong resident of New Jersey, Bill was unaware the farm even existed. “This is fantastic that the company affords us the opportunity to learn more about what’s happening in our local community,” said Bill, “in addition to giving back.”

Our group joined approximately 30 other Samsung employees in what became an eclectic cross-section of outdoor projects, including building a greenhouse drip irrigation system for the upcoming crop season and creating an Enchanted Forest with freshly planted trees.

The cloudy skies proved to be ideal for the labor-intensive projects, shielding us from the heat of the sun with no rain to combat until the work was completed. During a break from digging a hole for one of the new trees, Hiren commented, “This is quite the workout we’re having today, but well worth it, especially since we’re doing it together as a team.”

While Day of Service provides an avenue to forge new and strengthen old friendships with colleagues from different departments, “it was the chance to deepen the trust and camaraderie within our own business team that really made the opportunity so valuable,” said Allison.

Going into the project, it was important us to not just focus on running a business during working hours but also in settings outside of the office. The fact that we were able to achieve all this, while creating something unique and for the good of the community, makes it a win-win for everyone involved.

This year’s Day of Service marked the third collective outing for our group. Since the inception of Day of Service, we’ve consistently volunteered together because it offers the chance to work effectively as a group on creative projects for causes that are greater than ourselves.

Although our team is in the habit of dining and traveling for business as a group, we knew that the sweat equity invested in volunteering to help others would deliver fantastic results. Witnessing the fruits of our labor after a hard day of work moving rocks and planting trees, HK summed up the collective feeling of our group.

“This was a lot of fun,” he said. “I can’t wait until we get to do it again.”