More Than One Million Volunteers Have Improved Communities Around the World on Comcast Cares Day

Today, we reached an historic milestone on Comcast Cares Day – more than one million volunteers have joined in  service to improve their communities around the world since 2001.  Comcast NBCUniversal employees and their families, friends, and community partners participated in the 17th annual Comcast Cares Day, the nation’s largest single-day corporate volunteer effort and a powerful representation of the company’s year-round commitment to community service.  What started with 6,100 volunteers in 2001 in one city has now grown to more than 100,000 volunteers this year at over 1,000 sites in about 20 countries.

I have been involved in Comcast Cares Day since the beginning and thoroughly enjoy getting on the ground on this day and joining our employees and volunteers as we bring change to all of the communities where Comcast NBCUniversal does business.  This year, I started in Detroit where we worked with Cities of Service and the S.A.Y Detroit Play Center.  We removed brush and debris, and painted various corridors to beautify walls and remove graffiti.  The more than 125 volunteers also educated local businesses about Project Green Light, a program where Comcast partners with the city to promote public safety by providing security cameras at sites throughout the city.

Next, I headed to Chicago, joining about 300 volunteers and our partner Cradles to Crayons.  Together, we packed up new and nearly new children’s items to donate to some of the 200,000 youth living in poverty in Chicago.  We are pleased to expand our relationship with Cradles to Crayons with our second Comcast Cares Day project in a row, along with our work together to ensure that volunteerism and community engagement are a core component of Illinois’s official bicentennial events this year.  For the next month, NBC5 and Telemundo Chicago will be driving viewers to Xfinity stores to donate additional items to Cradles to Crayons and keep the Comcast Cares Day momentum going.

These projects today follow an exceptional project we held Wednesday in Philadelphia.  Twin sisters Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux, two of the leaders of the recent U.S. Olympic Gold Medal Women’s Hockey Team, joined us to help kick off Comcast Cares Day 2018 and were nothing less than inspirational.  These two incredible young women demonstrated that they share the same passion and commitment to giving back to their communities as we do.  Working with Snider Hockey, an organization that uses hockey to help boys and girls thrive in sports and in life, and City Year Philadelphia, which is dedicated to helping students in underserved communities stay in school, we were able to clean up the grounds surrounding a local hockey rink in West Philadelphia.  The twins then conducted two hockey clinics for about 100 Snider Hockey kids from the neighborhood and, along with some Comcast employee volunteers, also conducted some academic enrichment activities.  To cap off the day, we surprised the kids with free laptops and opportunity cards entitling them to six months of complimentary Internet access, as part of our acclaimed Internet Essentials program, which provides low-cost internet service to people in low-income communities.  It’s pretty clear those young people will not soon forget that day!

As another Comcast Cares Day comes to a close, I am filled with gratitude. More than one million volunteers have now joined us to improve communities in Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, and communities around the world over the past 17 years.  Those volunteers have refurbished schools, cleaned up parks, painted murals, planted trees and flowers, taught digital literacy skills, mentored children and nonprofit leaders, and so much more.  All of us are so grateful to our employees and other volunteers for their service and proud to be a part of this incredible day.