EA Gives Back is an all-day employee community impact experience, focusing on giving back and helping communities thrive. EA Gives Back Global Tour 2019 saw EA engage 892 employee volunteers from their studios in Austin, Montreal, Galway, Bucharest, and Shanghai, who dedicated over 5,600 hours of their time to make a positive impact in their local communities.
Volunteer Ireland was delighted to have the opportunity to project management the company’s key event in Galway engaging close to 100 volunteers in a single day. The project – to transform the classrooms at St. Michael’s Boy’s National School DEIS school) and create a lasting impact on the learning environment for the school’s 135 students and 17 teachers.
When the project day arrived EA volunteers transformed all 9 classrooms in the main building of the school along with the 3 large hallways and 3 flights of stairs – all of which were badly in need of attention. Twelve volunteer teams enthusiastically transformed each space, clearing, cleaning, taping, and painting… creating a cleaner, brighter,calmer, more inviting environment for the children to be welcomed into each morning.
An additional team of volunteers spent the day building furniture to convert one of the classrooms into a beautiful new multifunctional space that is now used for special education classes, group projects and afterschool activities such as the chess club and the homework club. A final classroom was transformed into a vibrant play therapy room, designed to accommodate and support children with additional needs.
The day was a great success and the newly transformed spaces will have a positive impact on the students, teachers and parents who come to work and learn in St.Michael’s for many years to come. Brendan, the School Principal was thrilled with the outcome. He told us “A huge thanks to the EA Gives Back volunteers, who showed up motivated and inspired to take on a mammoth task. Everyone put in an enormous effort and the results speak for themselves, a great success and an inspirational day to be a part of!” The EA volunteers were epic and threw their hearts and souls into the project.
One volunteer shared afterwards,“A truly amazing day as an EA employee, so proud to have been part of it. Brendan, the school principal, was an utter gent, and you could see what it meant to him. At one point, one of the teachers came into her classroom with her children to admire the work – that was such a cool moment! Finally, Volunteer Ireland – what a group of legends, I had no idea.”
