SuiteImpact Team Brno Leads Mušov Lake Clean-up Project

As part of NetSuite.org’s commitment to the communities where we live and work, the SuiteImpact Team program provides employees across all our NetSuite offices with opportunities to get involved with local charities. Each office has its own set of SuiteImpact Team Ambassadors, employee volunteers who manage the program. This month, we feature a guest blog from Lukas Skulnik, an ambassador from our Brno, Czech Republic office. Lukas recently took inspiration from a personal passion for fishing to help create an amazing employee volunteer day.

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In 1980, a dam was built flooding the village of Mušov, located right between our office in Brno and Vienna. Today, the only remaining building from that village that still can be seen is the church of St. Leonard, standing on a small island in the middle of the lake.The Mušov Lake serves as natural reserve for many protected species and is an important bird sanctuary where public entrance isstrictly forbidden.

Five years ago I had a chance to visit Mušov Lake and explore it on my kayak. It was in late May during the time when carps spawned. As an angler by heart I was amazed how many huge carps I could see, spawning in their natural habitat. I’ll never forget these beautiful moments, which were only marred by the presence of garbage polluting the lake. Thousands of PET bottles, canisters, beach slippers and other garbage carried by the river had collected here, on a place reserved for nature.

I was brainstorming an environment project that our employees could take with my fellow SuiteImpact Team ambassadors, Kamila and Martin, when we realized it would be awesome to clean the Mušov Lake on inflatable boats! We called the mayor that administers a district with Mušov lake and presented our proposal to him. He agreed and told us to coordinate the project with the River Management Directorate and Department of Natural Environment of Southmoravian Region. After few calls, they not only issued us approval to enter the reservoir, but they also offered us additional support by providing a garbage container and an access to power supply so we could easily inflate our boats with an electric compressor.

We created a simple wiki page outlining our plan and sent it to the office. Employees were excited about this opportunity, and over the course of a few weeks we had 60 volunteers signed up to participate!

On Friday, August 15th we met up at a rally point at the lake. The weather was perfect. There was no wind, so there were no waves and the sun was shining through few clouds. Our goal was simple: collect as much floating garbage as possible. We took to boats and spread out across the lake to start collecting debris. Pretty soon our bags were filled with garbage and we towed them back to land behind our boats. Over the course of the day, the SuiteImpact Brno employees managed to collect a whole truck of various types of floating trash!

At the end of the day, we visited the island of St. Leonard church, where people are not traditionally allowed. It was very rare experience that I know most of us will never forget. We received very positive feedback from our employee volunteers and from the partner organizations and local media. Everyone has been asking when we’re going back, and we’re already thinking about the 2015 NetSuite Mušov Lake clean-up.