Another Year, Another Opportunity to Give
As I get older, I am fascinated by the reality that time does seem to go by faster. It’s the same 60 seconds to a minute as in childhood, but they seem to be accelerating at a ridiculous rate now…. When those same 60 seconds of life were spent as a kid in a classroom, they seemed to be interminable! I guess this is my way of saying, it’s time again to update everyone on the Christmas giving you have helped Ashton to do this year!
Again this year, Toys for Tots and The Semper Fi Fund will be the beneficiaries of our donations this Christmas Season. And for that, I cannot express my gratitude enough. This is our fourth year of forgoing candy drops in favor of targeted giving, and each year has afforded us the opportunity to increase our donations and actually spread them out to other worthy causes.
One of our company’s core values is being humble. We define being humble like this: “It’s about ‘we’. It is about each of us being in service to each other and our clients”. I take this core value very seriously and believe that this core value applies to people in our community, churches, and neighbors, and not just my business. I know that my coworkers here at Ashton also believe in being humble when they start asking me in November what we plan on giving to Toys for Tots or Semper Fi Fund, and they begin to realize that through their work, we are able to have some small effect on people in our communities.
Like last year, we contacted the Marines of the 3D BN 25TH MARINES in Brook Park, OH and told them we would again be supplying gifts for girls between 9-14. The tone of the response was predictably a huge sigh of relief as this is the demographic for which they receive the fewest donations. They were, expectedly, happy that we were back at it, as this has been a big hit with the Marines doing the work. So, under the direction of my wife Madeleine, we set off this year to buy as much girl stuff as we could stuff into our van. Instead of doing only shampoo and smelly soaps, we added a huge haul of nail polish, perfume, big stuffed Teddy Bears, craft kits, and other things my daughter suggested. The effort and choices were justified when one of the female Marines helping to unload the gifts exclaimed how much she loved getting a Taylor Swift perfume set a few Christmases ago (yes, she’s only 18 years old….) I think it also takes a lot of pressure off the Marines who invariably struggle when handing out toys to the kids and don’t have enough things for girls in this age range.
We’re also donating this year to the Semper Fi Fund (www.semperfifund.org) which helps members of the US Armed Forces to overcome injuries and find jobs, while providing general assistance to those veterans in need. Since the Marine Corps is so involved with Toys for Tots, I decided that we needed to help them, too. Judging by the commitment the Marines have made to the Tots program, we find it just as necessary we come to their aid. Nothing can express my gratitude for their service to our nation, so I hope those most closely involved with their needs can help a little more through our donation.
This year, we also had the opportunity to increase our annual donation to The Special Olympics, in large part due to our technology recycling program. You see, we have taken to gathering old servers, PCs, laptops, printers, batteries etc. and recycling them with the help of local IT salvaging companies (if you come to the office sometime, you can see the pile accumulating). We then turn that into cash that we donate. Since we can accumulate so much stuff, we can actually turn $.20/pound into a tidy little donation for a great cause. So, if you have any IT recycling laying around, please let us know and we’ll haul it away and turn it into a donation for a very, very worthy cause!
There will be lots of kids in the area who will be grateful and thank you for something special this Christmas. There will also be a Veteran who will have an opportunity that you helped provide. And, I thank you for giving Ashton the opportunity to be a part of your giving.
God bless, Merry Christmas, and a Happy, Healthy New Year from all of us at Ashton Technology Solutions!
