Walking the Path to a Cleaner Community

Quick question: would you rather spend a warm summer day working in the office, or clad in jeans and a T-shirt enjoying the sunshine with your colleagues? Oh yeah, in the second scenario, you’re also volunteering to help improve your community.

That’s a no brainer, right? At least employees from the COUNTRY Financial Home Office in Bloomington, Illinois think so. In fact, trail clean-up on our local Constitution Trail has become a regular activity for members of our Resource Groups and department work teams using their company-provided volunteer time. Employees annually take to the trail at various times from May through October in the clean-up efforts that have brought employees closer to our community for over 10 years.

COUNTRY actuary and Constitution Trail volunteer Jena Dhooge says, “I love working for a company that values giving back to the community, and being able to get outside during a workday is an added bonus.” 

Working through our Resource Groups or coming together as colleagues gives our employees the opportunity to join a group of civic-minded individuals and help support programs and events that improve our community. In recent years, our employees have committed more than 16,000 hours annually volunteering in our communities, from trail clean-up to working at homeless shelters to helping prepare shipments at the local food bank. Getting a volunteer group together is a fun and fulfilling way to improve our surroundings and help advance our efforts to enrich lives in the communities we serve.