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The Ford Volunteer Corps is turning to give employees new ways to safely give back as part of Global Caring Month Ford Motor Companys 30-day fixed focus on community service that happens each September.

Two distinct initiatives Acts of Kindness and Gratitude Grants are intended to engage operators and nonprofits or nongovernmental organizations in empowering communities and securing peoples lives around the world amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year, there is special importance to Global Caring Month, said Todd Nissen, director, Ford Volunteer Corps. All over the globe, people are experiencing the pandemic and people are in upheaval as a result of racial and social injustice. Our Global Caring Month actions are intended to give workers important ways to make a distinction in peoples lives and aid cities in need in these unusual times.

Typically, thousands of Ford volunteers over six continents fan out into neighbourhoods to engage in hands-on service projects for Global Caring Month. This year, to manage health and safety, instead of planting gardens, cleaning and renovating shelters or stocking shelves at food pantries, Ford employees will focus their efforts on the following two activities:

• Gratitude Grants:Employees can choose a nonprofit or nongovernmental organization for a recognition grant, in honour of the important work they are doing in acknowledgement to COVID-19. The Ford Volunteer Corps will award grants of up to $5,000 to selected employee-nominated organizations, to help maintain or expand a groups efforts to serve its community and meet pandemic-related needs.

• Acts of Kindness:Ford Volunteer Corps is supporting workers to encourage their friends, neighbours or families in need by completing an act of kindness big or small. Whether calling to check in on someone who lives alone, donating blood, volunteering online or performing some other deed, employees are requested to present a photo of themselves doing good. Those who do will get a $15 USD gift card in recognition of the 15th anniversary of the Ford Volunteer Corps that can be used to support their choice of one of the thousands of vetted charitable projects in more than 160 countries.

Ford employees are relentlessly committed to promoting the performance of community groups throughout the world many of which are helping more people with less resources as they respond to the growing needs brought on by the pandemic, said Nissen. We know employees will answer the call to show our nonprofit associates how much we value the great work they are doing to help build a better world.

While COVID-19 has given obstacles to in-person volunteer work, it has also encouraged imaginative new strategies to serve others not only during Global Caring Month but throughout the past five months since the pandemic began.

Created in acknowledgement to Ford employees asking for ways to help, the COVID-19 Donation Match program helped the welfare efforts of 47 community organizations in 20 countries and 14 U.S. states. Exceeding its $1 million goal, the show raised more than $633,000 in individual donations that were then equalled by $500,000 from Ford Motor Company Fund the companys charitable arm and individual contributions from Executive Chairman Bill Ford.

In addition, Ford Fund created a Read and Record virtual volunteering project that invited Ford aides to read childrens books in their own writing for children to listen to when schools shut their doors and went to remote training at the end of the 2019-20 school year.

Now, as the world advances to cope with new realities brought on by COVID-19, the Ford Volunteer Corps is working closely with nonprofits to carve a new path for what community service looks like moving forward. In the short term, that involves stimulating the availability of virtual volunteering opportunities in the U.S. that can be performed online or via phone everything from making job applicants for interviews to reviewing grants online for women entrepreneurs to staffing a virtual Detroit census phone bank and more.

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