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The Northern New Jersey Good Business Awards 2005
Thirteen area companies were recently honored for their volunteer efforts and corporate citizenship at the sixth Annual Good Business Awards reception, held at the Hilton Woodcliff Lake. Bill Diana, of The NIA Group, was honored as 2005 Business Volunteer of the Year, for his many years of giving back to the community, both professionally and personally. Guests brought over 60 boxes of breakfast cereal which was donated to area hunger-relief organizations to alleviate summer food shortages. The collection marked the official beginning of Brown Bag Buddies, a strategic initiative sponsored by the BVC.
Good Business Awards are presented by the Northern New Jersey Business Volunteer Council (BVC), a not-for-profit coalition of businesses sponsored by the Volunteer Center of Bergen County in partnership with the Bergen County's United Way. Since 2000, its members have collectively directed more than $565,000 in resources to children and families in need.
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Reader’s Digest Association Reader’s Digest Association RD Cares received The Pinnacle Award for demonstrating the greatest overall commitment to employee involvement in the community. RD Cares’ mission is two-fold: to support partnerships with local organizations around employee volunteering and to encourage employee volunteering and philanthropy. Reader’s Digest “believes that a few good people can make a big difference in society and, as a responsible business, we have an obligation to support the community in which we operate.” RD Cares sponsors several employee volunteer activities events and programs that target literacy, education and related youth development and learning experiences. Finalists in this category were KPMG and Quest Diagnostics.
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Wachovia Wachovia of West Trenton received the award for Outstanding Volunteer Project, for partnering with the NY Giants to assist in building a Habitat for Humanity home for a low-income family in Newark. Wachovia and the Giants shared the $80,000 cost of building the home, and Wachovia provided most of the volunteers to build the home. The project took nine months to complete and 200 employees volunteered more than 2,000 hours to make this house a reality for the Habitat family. The finalists in this category were UPS Information Services, PSE&G, and Wachovia of Charlotte Michele Calise (L) of Wachovia, accepts the award from JoAnn Dow-Breslin, manager of community affairs at PSE&G, and chairperson of the BVC.
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United Water United Water received the Good Business Partnership award, for its work with Heroes and Cool Kids, a non-profit organization that employs selected professional athletes to train high school student leaders, who then become mentors to elementary school students. United Water employees have contributed more than 700 volunteer hours to helping Heroes and Cool Kids by designing and printing a brochure, helping with their golf outing and assisting with board development. Finalists in this category were Hunter Douglas and The Reader's Digest Association. JoAnn Dow-Breslin, chairperson of the BVC, presents the award to Tamesha Harper of United Water and Bruce Harper of Heroes and Cool Kids.
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The award for Outstanding Employee Volunteer Corps went to KPMG of Montvale for their local participation in KPMG’s national employee volunteer program, Involve. The 38 members of the Montvale Involve Steering committee work year-round to encourage the involvement of employees in causes which align with KPMG’s values. They promote and support office-wide initiatives like quarterly blood drives, the March of Dimes WalkAmerica and the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, and also encourage and enable employees to volunteer on an individual basis. Employees from every area of the business are represented on Involve. The two finalists in this category were IBEW Local 164 and PSE & G.
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A highlight of the evening was the presentation of the first annual Business Volunteer of the Year Award, to William T. “Billy” Diana for his many years of service, both professionally through The NIA Group, and personally through his volunteerism with numerous organizations in the community.
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