Icertis Joins the Red Cross "Helping Your Neighbor" Program to Fight COVID-19 in Frankfurt
With public health measures to combat COVID-19 requiring us to distance ourselves from each other all over the world, it can be difficult to maintain the strong communities we’ve built up over the years. Whether it is connecting with our extended family, maintaining longstanding friendships or even sharing a moment with a neighbor, this pandemic is testing us in ways we’ve never experienced. Like everyone, we at Icertis are learning lessons every day as we adapt to the realities of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Front of mind for us is how to empower Icertians to care for themselves and their families. But we’ve also been asking ourselves what we can do for the communities around us, all while ensuring that we take care of our customers and the business in general. Our approach to those challenges has been to actively tackle what we are calling our Four Rings of Responsibility – taking care of ourselves, our family, our community and our business.
As Chancellor Angela Merkel detailed in her national address last week, no challenge to Germany has ever demanded such a degree of common and united action. At Icertis, we believe that we must maintain strong communities to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Our shared self-sacrifice will protect each other and, in the end, help us forge new bonds that will last for years to come.
Icertis is proud to have our European headquarters located in Frankfurt and we are committed to doing our part for the community in which we work and live. Prior to the outbreak, Icertians would gather in the office to share a community meal, which was fully funded by the company. But with all our employees working from home, we felt compelled to share our lunch money and other office operational savings with those who are being impacted by the massive response to this pandemic. So, we’ve partnered with the Frankfurt chapter of the German Red Cross to support the most vulnerable in our community by donating four weeks of lunch money, a total of €10,000, to their recently launched coronavirus response program “Nachbarschaftshilfe in der Corona-Krise” – Helping Your Neighbor During the Corona Crisis.
We were compelled by the project’s goal of bringing together people seeking help and those who offer help. As one of 37 Red Cross district associations in Hesse, the Frankfurt chapter is committed to the Red Cross mandate of helping people solely according to the degree of need, regardless of nationality, race, religion, social position or political affiliation.
Our donation will be used to provide support to high-risk groups such as the elderly, including finding care assistants, auxiliary cooks and individuals with medical backgrounds to meet their needs. With older citizens forced to shelter in their homes during the crisis, many need help with purchasing groceries, in-home emergency medical care, or simply connecting with others in these isolating times.
“We at the Red Cross are part of a global community that provides help without discrimination to victims of disasters, as well as other people in need, based solely on their need," said Dierk Dallwitz, Managing Director, Frankfurt chapter, German Red Cross. "In order to do that, we cooperate with organizations like Icertis that share our commitment to life, health, well-being, protection, peaceful coexistence and the dignity of all people. We are truly thankful to the Icertis employees who have donated to our new project as we work together as a community to combat COVID-19."
This donation continues our employees’ global efforts to address the needs of our communities which include:
- In Seattle, Icertians donated 25,000 lunches via The Alliance for Education for kids who rely on schools, now closed, for free and reduced-cost meals.
- In Pune, we donated ₹25 lakh(~ €30,000) to help the local health authority purchase masks, gowns and other personal protection equipment for frontline healthcare heroes.
While the COVID-19 pandemic is an extraordinary event in our lifetime, we know that by wearing our four rings of responsibility, our global community can overcome this challenge and unite to help our neighbors in ways that are equally extraordinary.