For the second year in a row, Vigilant Futures employees participated in RBC’s relay race challenge benefiting Centraide. For the first time though, we won with the best time.
Vigilant Futures employees’ posted the best time out of 43 teams right from the start. We were second up the 41 flights of stairs to the top of Place Ville Marie following only the team of honour…current and former Canadian Olympians.
In total, RBC raised $106, 000 for Centraide’s 2011 holiday campaign and Vigilant Futures is proud to have helped in our small way. You can check out a clip from last’s race below and our photos from the day’s events on our Flickr page.
Yesterday, the founder of Youth Fusion – Gabriel Bran Lopez – joined Vigilant employees over lunch. He brought along a robot for a lunchtime demo to motivate Vigilant employees about the upcoming 2012 FIRST Robotics challenge and the regional in Montreal.
Students from a high school in the greater Montreal area built the robot with the guidance of a Youth Fusion mentor from ETS University in Montreal. The idea was to get employees excited about the event Vigilant Futures is sponsoring in a few ways; first as an event co-sponsor along with other Montreal-based companies, and second through sponsoring the robot-build at Lasalle Community Comprehensive High School.
Last Wednesday September 28th, Vigilantes donned bright orange t-shirts to solicit spare change from Montrealers for a good cause: National Raise-a-Reader day.
On the 10th anniversary of Raise-a-Reader, the organization raised upwards of $1.75 million for Canadian organizations devoted to providing family literacy programs. All the funds raised in the community stay in the community.
Well, the total is in and Vigilant Futures helped raise $23, 000 in Montreal alone.
Vigilant Futures employee in 2010 Raise-a-Reader day.
Employees of Vigilant Futures are giving up their lunch hour and then some today to help sell a special edition of The Montreal Gazette through the downtown streets of our fair city. Why? Today is Raise-a-Reader day in Canada.
Our employees raised just over $2700 in our annual auction held in August with all proceeds going to Raise-a-Reader and Vigilant Futures added another $2000 as a corporate sponsor. We’ll be collecting donations for a few hours in the busy downtown core of the city in exchange for a special edition of The Gazette.
Each year, Postmedia collects funds through corporate and individual donations it then redistributes among Canadian organizations that have family literacy programs. All the money collected stays in the community it was raised in.
To date, the initiative has generated $17 million since its national launch in 2002. Last year Vigilant Futures employees raised just over $4400 for the cause and the company donated $2000 as a local sponsor. Montrealers donated $46, 303 for literacy in 2010.
Vigilant Futures donate lunch hour to collect donations.
It was an exceptionally warm and humid early autumn day in Montreal yesterday, and it just happened to be the annual 42 KM Montreal Oasis marathon. As usual, parts of the city were closed to traffic to let the runners through. Four members of the Vigilant Run Club registered to run the half marathon and today a few of them are a little more sore than your typical Monday morning.
Our very own 5* Athlete – an occasional Vigilant blogger – finished with the best Vigilante time of 1h 45mins, but the others did really well too. They looked as good yesterday as they did last week running the marathon in their matching Vigilant jerseys.
Members of the Vigilant Futures run club at the Montreal marathon
So for the past few months – each Wednesday – about six to eight Vigilantes meet in the lobby after work and jog through the streets of Montreal. The purpose: train for the Montreal Oasis Marathon.
In the lead up to the big event (which happens to be this coming weekend), some members of the Run Club donned a new Vigilant team jersey and oh-so-lovely and stylish head lamps to run the Energizer Night Race on Parc Jean Drapeau. Some got to the park more prepared than others with healthy snacks and drinks.
If you want to see the Vigilantes in action and in the dark with their great Vigilant gear, check out the rest of the photos at Vigilant Futures Flickr photostream.
On October 6, 2011 at a banquet for the Quebec regionals, Ernst & Young Canada will award its Entrepreneurs of the Year Award. Gabriel Bran Lopez will receive a special citation as the Social Entrepreneur of the year.
This special citation is a unique category among the awards. It’s given in recognition of an entrepreneur whose achievements have driven large-scale social change and improved people’s lives or quality of life. We all know about Gabriel’s work and the success of Youth Fusion, so it came as no surprise to us at Vigilant Futures he would be recognized with such a prestigious award.
We are constantly in awe of him. We’re humbled by his modesty and proud to work so closely with him, Youth Fusion, and the students they help every day.
Youth Fusion announced today something everyone here at Vigilant has known about for a short while! One of our co-founders, Arvind Ramanathan, was appointed a board member on the Board of Directors for Youth Fusion. We’re all pretty excited, especially Arvind.
Every Vigilante works with Youth Fusion in one way or another, but no one tops Arvind. He’s fully committed to Youth Fusion and the Youth Fusion kids. He’s involved with Youth Fusion in so many ways we’re glad he got the recognition he deserved for his hard work!
Youth Fusion already boasts some pretty big board members but we’re sure Arvind’s astute business acumen combined with his passion and that of Gabriel Bran Lopez’ – founder of Youth Fusion — to motivate teens to stay in school will serve Youth Fusion well.
Speechless, proud and deeply moved is how I left Youth Action Montreal’s Living Your Legacy conference. The line-up of speakers the Youth Action Montreal team presented at the event was truly amazing. It was a day of great Canadians, and some of whom were from Montreal. They had Craig Kielburger from Free the Children and Me to We, David Suzuki, Co-Founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, Stephen Lewis, Co-Founder and Co-Director of AIDS-Free World, Gabriel Bran Lopez, Founder, Youth Fusion, and Kristina Partsinevelos, 5 days for the Homeless, to name a few.
David Suzuki at YAM 2011
They all spoke on different global issues that are all linked to one another.
Several Vigilantes were in attendance. A few of us were fortunate enough to attend a cocktail afterwards where we had the pleasure of speaking with some of the amazing speakers about their missions. We had the pleasure of meeting Kristina Partsinevelos from 5 days for the Homeless. Her talk was so inspiring and we were just chomping at the bit to be able to speak with her. She told us more about her experience of being homeless for 5 days and how she was still going to work 3 out of those 5 days. Now, keep in mind that the participants who committed to the full 5 days, as she did, did not eat unless they were offered food, did not shower for 5 days and slept outside in the cold no matter the weather. Because it was on a busy street corner right in the middle of downtown, they did not get much sleep either.
She told us about how they found cardboard boxes to sleep on and their thrill at finding a one dozen egg carton. They would all take turns passing around the egg carton and place it under the cardboard box while they slept so it would be more comfortable. She said it didn’t really change much in terms of comfort, but just the thought of it was comforting. This may be the reality on any given night for a homeless person – picking up anything they can find that may make their living situation just a little better.
After talking to her and seeing her passion, she had us sold on participating somehow and in some way in next year’s 5 Days for the Homeless. Who knows, maybe I’ll do it for one night – we’ll see.
The take away from all of this is that we can all make a difference. Craig Kielburger said if you are unable to make a financial contribution or to give up your time, then contribute by being socially conscious consumers. There are many ways in which we can be socially conscious. We can try to stay clear of companies that endorse child labour, buy local, organic foods and organic clothing, etc. We all make purchases every day or almost every day and if we just invest a little bit of time in educating ourselves on the products we buy and making conscious choices of which companies and products we want to support, we can all make an impact on the world. If each and every one of us did this in our daily lives, imagine the impact that could have on our world!
TOMS Shoes decided April 5th would be a good day for people around the world to commemorate the fact millions of children globally do not wear shoes on a daily basis simply because they don’t have any. Poverty in developing countries doesn’t allow for shoes when food and shelter are more important requirements. This leaves the very young exposed to infection, intestinal worms, cold weather disease, and countless other diseases most people in developed areas take for granted every day.
So Vigilant Futures lent their support in the way of barefoot feet hitting the cold and rainy pavement of downtown Montreal with local ‘One day without shoes’ event organizers. We all met on the corner of St. Catherine and University, donned in the proper attention-getting signage and attire, but minus socks and shoes. Our bare feet were the star attraction by far.
Needless to say, spring is a little late this year and the ground was not very cooperative yesterday. On the plus side, the pavement was so cold it numbed our feet pretty quickly so the nasty elements Montrealers leave behind on sidewalks were a distant thought.
Sure some of us walked around barefoot in the office all day but that was inadequate preparation for what we felt outside, what millions of kids around the world feel every day but don’t give it a second thought because they’ve never known anything else.
