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REALTORS VOLUNTEER BUILD convn.org/nar-build Every year at its REALTORS Confer- ence & Expo, the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) gives attendees a chance to move from sales to manu- facturing — by participating in the Volunteer Build program. Working with Habitat for Humanity in the city’s host destination, participants help build homes for families in need of affordable housing. During NAR’s 2012 conference, held in Orlando, about 100 attendees worked on houses for three families
— an experience that Utah REALTOR Kenny Parcell called “one of the best service opportunities I have ever participated in.” Another participant, Dana L. Gurnsey, an administrative assistant with the Illinois Association of REALTORS, said: “Being associated with the real-estate industry, I think we sometimes take the homes we live in for granted. When you work on a Habitat for Humanity build, frequently you get to meet the owner or owners and occasionally you attend the dedica- tion. When you see the smile on the face of those owners, it’s like seeing one of the things that make this a great nation, and then you understand how important this really is. You’ve helped someone change their life.”
DANISH EU PRESIDENCY convn.org/denmark-green It’s one thing to green a single meeting or even a building. But how about an entire presidency? That was the goal of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’
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logistics team when the country assumed the 2012 presidency of the European Union. Denmark committed itself to making the entire administration — its events and other operations — as sustainable as possible. That included energy provided by Danish wind turbines, waste sorted into 16 differ- ent categories of recyclables, eco-certified hotel rooms, CO2-neutral freight, no conference handouts, and no cut flowers or bottled water. Indeed, the administration came to be known as “the Tap Water Presidency.” “It’s a nickname we are very proud of,” Andreas Claus Boor, dep- uty team leader for EU2012 logistics, said in a video about the program, “because it sig- nals that we care about the resources and we care about our waste and we care about our CO2 emissions.”
American Forests’ Meeting ReLeaf
RED CROSS AT DREAMFORCE salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF12 Salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce conference offers a variety of local volunteer opportunities — and at last year’s event, held on Sept. 18–21 in San Francisco, they included helping the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter assemble emergency-preparedness kits. Each kit was packed with food and water, first-aid supplies, batteries, blankets,
duct tape, and more. At least one attendee was struck by the ease of it all.
“American Red Cross emergency-bag fill at Dreamforce 2012 showed that a pro- gram is never too big to engage attend- ees in a personal CSR experience that does not involve a large amount of time from their schedule,” said Eve Schmitt, CMP, CEM, senior manager of global meeting sourcing and vendor relations for VMware. “Less than four minutes and the aha moment was achieved.”