Thankful for UCT

In my home, Thanksgiving is an opportunity to embrace and share heritage established by generations. We always have family around and cook the biggest turkey we can find. This year I am thankful for many things, including my family, my husband, wonderful kids and grandkids, being healthy, our home, hot showers, water and the clothes on my back.

I am also thankful to work for UCT because it is an organization that gives back to its community. It’s in our tagline: “Where Community and Compassion Unite.” I have a passion for giving, so I find UCT a perfect fit. UCT supports charities each month that home office employees pay hundreds of dollars toward to dress down and wear jeans:

January – Faith Mission
February – American Heart Association
March – Operation Feed
April – May E. Tisdale Scholarship Fund
May – UCT Convention Community Service Project
June – Operation Feed
July – Light the Night Walk – LLS
August – Central Ohio Diabetes Association
September – Toys for Tots
October – St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
November – Toys for Tots
December – Alzheimer’s Association

In addition, we kicked off the Operation Feed campaign March 1. The campaign raised $6,393 dollars, which totaled 25,640 meals for hungry individuals in central Ohio. We did fundraisers around the office like a 50/50 drawing, pizza lunch and City Barbecue lunch, sold paper peppers & asparagus cutouts that we hung in the lobby at the home office with employees’ names on them. We also had our 5^th annual food truck rally where we set up a selfie station for donations and invited five food trucks, an ice cream truck, and an Ohio apparel truck.

The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Light the Night Walk kickoff was August 8. Team UCT raised $1,550 for this cause. We also did fundraising at the home office like a movie basket raffle, walking taco lunch, Bingo, and a popcorn and lemonade sale. Our team walked the Light the Night walk on a warm dark night in October.

To date our Toys for Tots campaign has raised over $300, which included our Halloween costume contest where employees voted on the best costume with spare change, and we also collected money from September’s jean’s month. We are also collecting new, unwrapped toys to be put under the tree at the home office. Thanks to our efforts, there will be a lot of children smiling on Christmas morning.

I love working for UCT and seeing our employees open their hearts up and give to all the charities. I am thankful to have such wonderful people to work with every day. I hope everyone has a safe & happy Thanksgiving, and remember to be thankful for the things you have.