Over the years, the NetSuite Manila Office has grown to hundreds of employees. The bigger the organization gets, the more we’re committed to giving back to the local community in which we reside. We do this by continuously expanding our social contribution programs under the wing of NetSuite.org, NetSuite’s corporate citizenship arm. We seek to contribute to the betterment of our community by increasing the number of local nonprofits that receive NetSuite software donations (opens in new tab), growing our pro bono activities and ramping up our volunteer activities.

To that end, the Manila SuiteImpact Team (opens in new tab) organized six volunteer activities in the first half of the year alone. These activities seek to build awareness for causes in our community, showcase our employees’ talents and dedication and provide an avenue for the office to give back. Here are two of those successful activities:

SuiteImpact Photography Contest: Think Green

Social media photo sharing sites have made photography ubiquitous. Although many rely heavily on their smartphones to quickly and easily shoot and share, many of our colleagues choose to bring their DSLRs everywhere they go, looking for the perfect shot. Playing to this trend, our SuiteImpact Team teamed up with Haribon Foundation (opens in new tab), a membership organization committed to nature conservation, and launched an employee photography contest. Nearly 40 employees participated, showcasing their beautiful work. To help prepare the participants for the competition, the SuiteImpact Team provided free basic and advanced photography classes.

Of course, the SuiteImpact volunteer photographers did not fail to deliver inspiring and thought provoking photos promoting NetSuite and Haribon Foundations joint campaign on environmental awareness. A training room was turned into a photo gallery, where all submitted photographs were available for viewing for a full week. All employees were encouraged to view the photos and vote for the “Employees Choice Award,” a special award to be given to the photo with the most number of votes.

After careful deliberation, the panel of judges, which consists of NetSuite Philippines and Haribon Foundation executives, chose the top three photos, with the 1st place win going to QA Engineer Gilda Tarit. The 2nd and 3rd place finishers were Senior Technical Instructor Ishmael Vargas and Release/Build Engineer Krishan Philipp Ta-Asan. The employee choice award went to Platform Software Engineer II Terence Boydon.

The winning photograph, which was aptly titled after the man in the photo “Manong Unyol,” shows a man cleaning up trash near a waterfall. Gilda snapped the photo while following Manong Unyol during one of his environment preservation missions.

The winners were awarded a full-year membership with Haribon Foundation and will be the official endorser for NetSuite’s Adopt-a-Seedling pledges to the foundation worth Php10,000.

7th Annual Back-to-School Drive

Our annual back-to-school drive is in its 7th year and we continue to find ways to elevate the program. For the first time, we partnered with an external organization, National Bookstore, to bring school necessities and priceless smiles to public school students.

Over a few weeks, employees were encouraged to help fund the back to school needs of local school children. Always rising to the challenge, our generous employees raised Php70,000 for the campaign! Using the money raised, we worked with our partner National Bookstore to provide all the basic supplies students will need to start the 2014 school year. The supplies were bundled up into individual packets and our SuiteImpact Volunteers distributed them to over 300 students of Jacinto Zamora Elementary School and the Paranaque Elementary School.

The Manila SuiteImpact Team has more exciting CSR programs coming up in the 2nd half the year. We are sure to welcome new employee volunteers and we are definitely excited to create more goodwill partnerships with local organizations. Stay tuned for the updates!

To learn more about NetSuite.org, please visit our www.netsuite.org (opens in new tab).