How our employees are living out our legacy of giving back

Stephan Griebel is a problem-solver who sees humanitarian emergencies as an opportunity to do good. Stephan, a director at our company, is a front-row witness to the refugee crisis in Europe as thousands of displaced people have sought asylum in Germany, his home country.

“I saw that refugees were staying in mass accommodations such as sports halls, tents and even shipping containers,” he said. “I knew we had to do more to help integrate them and make them feel welcome.”

Stephan, an educator by background, has a caring teacher’s heart and so launched his journey to turn a difficult situation into something positive. Today, he and a volunteer team of 40 have expanded their focus to create a sustainable infrastructure of services for refugees, including housing solutions, German language lessons, enrolling children in school, assistance with paperwork and job placement. The team now supports refugees from 12 countries.

Meeting local needs

Stephan is not alone in his efforts to build stronger communities. Our company has more than 20 community involvement teams around the world that live our ambition to be a company that we’re personally proud to be a part of and would want as our neighbor. These teams and other civic-minded employees and retirees volunteered thousands of hours in 2023 to help solve local needs.

Savinaya MV, a hardware engineer in Bangalore, regularly returns to his hometown to inspire students to participate in school. 

“During one of my visits home, I spent time with a local school administrator and realized that one of the challenges the school faced was dropouts and new-student enrollment,” Savinaya said. “Limited financial resources by many of the students’ families means they cannot afford even the most basic school materials, and so these students either do not enroll or they eventually drop out of school.”

This scenario is common in India’s rural communities, where students face learning roadblocks, including limited access to transportation, healthcare, nutrition, trained teachers and learning materials. But Savinaya and other TIers in India are working hard to remove barriers to education. For the past eight years he and 300 of his colleagues have traveled hundreds of miles to provide learning kits through a back-to-school program with 200 government schools that serve students in remote areas.

“I have found that for most students, the most meaningful part is that we take a keen interest in them and spend time and effort to come meet with them,” said Praveen Kumar HV, who is a senior layout engineer for our company. “This often means more to the children than receiving the school kit itself.”

^{A 2023 Taiwan beach cleanup day brought together more than 500 participants and removed nearly 4,000 pounds of debris from beaches.}

The story is similar in other communities around the world where we live and work:

• In Malaysia, employees in Kuala Lumpur and Melaka volunteer with low-income residents, the hungry and children who live near TI sites.
• TIers in Taiwan clean up plastic waste and other trash from the country’s coastal areas.
• Employees in China volunteer in programs that pave the way to a better future for children. Their efforts include raising funds for a program that donates pediatric heart surgeries, teaching the basics of hygiene health and self-care to students in Sichuan Province, supporting a program that teaches English to migrant children, and creating classrooms for students who live in difficult-to-reach.
• In the United States, a team from Utah and Texas recently traveled a total of 1,500 miles to visit schools in remote areas of the Navajo Nation to spark a love of science and math among students.
• And in Dallas, where our company is headquartered, our employee resource groups volunteer in a wide variety of areas that matter to their members, ranging from education to human services and issues affecting their various cultures. These groups include our New Employee Network, whose members were joined last year by TI leaders to volunteer at an all-day STEM Fest to encourage southern Dallas County students’ curiosity and confidence in math and science.

Inspiring a global philanthropic culture

Andy Smith champions our company’s philanthropic spirit at work and at home. Andy leads the Giving and Volunteering team, is executive director of the TI Foundation, and advocates for the arts and the LGBTQ+ community in Dallas.

“Our employees follow a core set of company values that define who we are and how we behave – both at work and in our communities,” he said. “TIers around the world are making life a little easier for those facing hardships by helping neighbors in areas many of us take for granted – food, income, shelter, health and education. They truly embody the philanthropic spirit set by our founders, and their generosity is inspiring, humbling and makes me proud to be a TI employee.”