As you may have read in several previous blog posts, Citrix employees across the map are given the opportunity to take a paid day off work to volunteer for a community organization in need. This past week, I was able to participate in the Citrix Global Day of Impact for Relay for Life of Leesville/Brier Creek/RTP in Raleigh.

For those unfamiliar, Relay for Life is a fundraising event organized in communities across the globe by the American Cancer Society. Participants camp out around a track, while members of each team take turns walking around the track for the duration of the event. Walkers honor the people in their life who have been affected by the disease – survivors, those who are fighting the disease, and those who have already lost the battle. Relay is a family-friendly environment, catering to the entire community with an array of food, games, and activities to provide entertainment and fundraising. With cancer now a leading cause of death in the world, money raised at the event goes towards research, treatment, and awareness of the disease.

The culture that has been created is an important part of what makes ShareFile unique. Corporate Citizenship is an important part of our culture at Citrix. According to CEO Mark Templeton, “Our strategy is to inculcate an ethic of community stewardship into our culture.”

Thanks to the encouragement to give back to the community, last week I had the opportunity to volunteer with Rebuilding Together of the Triangle for Citrix’s Global Day of Impact. Rebuilding Together is a nonprofit organization that provides free repairs to low-income homeowners, many of whom are disabled, elderly, or veterans. Each year, Rebuilding Together hosts National Rebuilding Day.

Last week, ten ShareFilers participated in our second Global Day of Impact event. As Kevin and Jennifer have written, Citrix encourages employees to spend a normal workday giving back to their community every year. ShareFile employees have come up with a variety of volunteer projects for GDI that will be taking place over the next few months.

For this event, we traveled to SEEDS community garden in Durham to spend a day helping out. SEEDS is a great organization that gives city dwellers a place to grow vegetables on their own garden plot, and they also provide low-cost educational programs for kids. Our group was able to help the SEEDS staff with upkeep of the garden and structures so that visitors and gardeners can continue to enjoy it.

When I started at ShareFile, I didn’t expect that I’d spend a workday building a road under the watchful (or was it hungry?) gaze of nearby tigers, but thanks to Citrix’s Global Day of Impact, that’s exactly how I spent last Friday. Corporate Citizenship is very important to the cultures of both ShareFile and Citrix, and to encourage community service and volunteerism, every employee is given an extra day off to volunteer in their community.

For our Global Day of Impact, we headed to Carolina Tiger Rescue, a nonprofit wildlife sanctuary whose mission is saving and protecting wild cats in captivity and in the wild. Housing 14 tigers, 3 lions, and an assortment of other wildcats from ocelots to binturongs, the Rescue takes in animals from bad situations and cares for them for life. Many of the animals were used irresponsibly by their previous owners. A lion named Sebastian was part of a Haunted House in Texas, while another lion named Tarzan was used as an attraction at a hotel in Mexico. Two of the tigers, Rajah and Kaela, were found wandering a highway near Charlotte, NC.