Hunger is the world’s number 1 health risk, killing more than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined each year.Close to 900 million people do not have enough to eat and 98 percent of them live in developing countries. Even in developed countries like the United States, 15 percent of households were food insecure at some point during 2011, meaning its members had uncertain access to adequate and safe food.

Cisco’s annual employee giving campaign, Global Hunger Relief, is focused on providing immediate support to those in desperate need.

At locations around the globe, Cisco employees contribute time, dollars, and expertise in support of more than 140 organizations working to help those who don’t have reliable access to food and clean water. Collectively, we donate over $1 million to hunger relief annually through the Global Hunger Relief Campaign.

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Tags: Cisco, CSR, employee, giving, Global Hunger Relief, hunger, impact multiplied, volunteer

Cisco is proud to be a partner in Giving Tuesday, a campaign to create a national day of giving at the start of the annual holiday season.

We are celebrating Giving Tuesday by:

1. Promoting Cisco’s signature employee giving initiative, the Global Hunger Relief Campaign. Our goal: contribute $1.25 million in employee donations to hunger relief agencies globally and 12,500 volunteer hours by December 31, 2012. Cisco employee donations to the Campaign are matched twice – once by the Cisco Foundation and once by Cisco Chairman Emeritus John Morgridge – multiplying their impact.

2. Volunteering at several Cisco locations. In Lawrenceville, Georgia, Cisco employees will pack meal boxes for the underserved in Gwinnett County in partnership with Gwinnett Technical College. In Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Cisco employees will sort food at the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. In Richardson, Texas, Cisco employees will volunteer in the food pantry at The Network, providing much-needed groceries for the nonprofit organization’s clients. And, Cisco headquarters in San Jose, California will partner with Stop Hunger Now to pack meals for distribution to hungry children around the world.

Employees from Cisco’s Research Triangle Park office volunteer at a Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina on Giving Tuesday 2012.

3. Donating meals to the World Food Programme (WFP) through its How Do You Give Facebook campaign. For every comment someone makes on Facebook, Cisco will contribute $1 – enough for WFP to provide 4 meals to people facing hunger.

Here’s how YOU can be part of Giving Tuesday:

• Leave a comment on the Cisco Facebook How Do You Give Campaign

• Follow #GivingTuesday on Twitter

• Visit Giving Tuesday for more ideas

Tags: campaign, Cisco, CSR, employee, giving tuesday, hunger relief

If you’re a social manager trying to weather the storm all by yourself, at some point you have probably yelled (or will yell) for a life vest. Your life vest can come in many shapes and sizes. And help may be closer than you think. In the context of social media, a life vest can be budget, executive support, an army of employees (whose  main job is not social media) ready to engage with you, or a combination of the above. For the purpose of this blog post, I’m going to focus on building employee engagement.       

The Framework

 I’d like to offer up a framework to those of you that are looking to mobilize your employees. Read More »

Tags: activation, CEO, cxo, employee, engagement, Executive, how to, participate, social media

I was invited as a speaker and panelist to the B2B Social Communications Leadership Forum presented by PR Newswire and Business Development Institute. First of all, kudos to the organizers and our moderator, Michael Pranikoff (@mpranikoff) of PR Newswire. I also want to give a shout out to my fellow keynote speaker, Matt Ceniceros (@mattceni) of Applied Materials and our fellow panelists David Hargreaves (@DavidHargreaves) of Beyond and Tony Uphoff (@TonyUphoff) of UBM TechWeb.

In a nutshell, my presentation focused on how we organize social business at Cisco and how our internal social efforts have an effect on external social engagement. If you just did a double take, here is what I mean by that:

1. Defining the sand box: we encourage our employees to participate in social media but we realize that we need to do so in a way that protects both the company and individuals. You know the old saying “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”? The new saying should go more like “What happens in Vegas ends up on Twitter or Facebook”. Hence the need for social media governance. Our policies and guidelines are the first step for anyone at Cisco looking to engage in social media. Knowing the expectations and rules of engagement is a prerequisite.  

2. Providing the tools and know how: once a person has familiarized him-/herself with our policies and guidelines, our next step is to arm this person with various tools and resources to help him or her on his or her social journey. And being a large company, the ability to scale our education and enablement programs is critical. We look at education and enablement Read More »

Tags: education, employee, enablement, how to, social brand, Social Business, social media