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| This year, the school is sponsoring the COMECC “Dare to Care” photo wall, where employees can post photos of themselves holding signs about the causes they care about. |
There are only a few days remaining to support any of the more than 1,000 screened local, regional, national and international nonprofits through the state’s COMECC campaign, which provides state employees a safe way to support a variety of mission areas including education, health, homelessness, veterans, the environment and medical research.
The medical school has traditionally been one of the largest supporters of the COMECC campaign, and this year an ambitious goal of $400,000 has been set. In the first two weeks of the campaign the response has been tremendous and some individual departments have already reached full 100 percent staff participation.
Employees can donate by completing a paper pledge form provided by their department’s COMECC team leader or online at www.COMECC.net. Additional information can be found at http://umassmed.edu/comecc.
“The power of pooling even modest individual donations is quite remarkable,” said James Leary, Esq, vice chancellor for community and government relations. According to the United Way, a contribution of $5 can pay for a meal, a book or a bottle of vitamins; a $10 contribution buys a shirt or school supplies; and $20 could mean a new pair of sneakers for a child or fresh haircuts for several homeless veterans.
Many medical school employees have supported the community, including Joyce Barrett, the senior administrator in the departments of quantitative health sciences and microbiology & physiological systems. Barrett has contributed annually for the 33 years she has worked at UMMS, beginning with the American Cancer Society, drug and alcohol abuse agencies and the American Heart Association. Her donations sparked an interest in becoming even more deeply involved, which led her to join the Women’s Initiative of Central Massachusetts, where she came to learn about the difficulties faced by many teenage girls in Worcester.
“As both a parent, and a woman, I could appreciate that opportunities to develop skills and self-confidence in the middle school years were key to success in high school and beyond,” Barrett said. “I visited program sites, and best of all, was able to listen to girls in some of the programs we’d funded talk about what they’d learned and enjoyed.”
All medical school employees who pledge to COMECC by the close of business on Nov. 26 will be eligible for a raffle. Last week 17 UMMS employees won raffle prizes, and in the final week of the campaign, the grand prize of an iPad Mini will be given away.
This year, the school is also sponsoring the “Dare to Care” photo wall, where employees can post photos of themselves or their co-workers holding signs about the causes they care about, and challenge others by sharing their own photo.
