Giving Back to Our Community

Community Involvement

At Snaptech, we care about community–from our smaller Snaptech community of our team members and clients to the larger community of Vancouver and the surrounding areas in which we live. As such, part of our company culture involves taking time out of our busy days to give back to our communities through a volunteering initiative that we launched at the end of 2022. Once per quarter, we take about 4 hours out of our day to volunteer with a variety of organizations across Greater Vancouver–basically whoever will have us as we can sometimes be a rather large group. With a full year of volunteering under our belts, we’re excited to share some of the things we’ve been up to when we’re not creating ad campaigns, crafting killer marketing strategies, or building and designing great looking websites.

Our Volunteering Initiative

As you can imagine, organizing a group of up to 10 people spread out across the city can be a lot like herding cats–if those cats all had different methods of transportation, a wide array of availabilities, and a host of other scheduling factors to consider. Nevertheless, with the help of organizations like United Way and the ever-patient Ian Chian, we manage to organize ourselves into one large or multiple small-sized groups and descend upon the city like helpful little elves, happy to take on any task we’ve signed up for (indeed, we actually got to be elves at one point, but I’ll explain that later).

Sorting Food Like We Sort Through Analytics

The majority of our volunteer work has been at various food rescue centres across the city. According to Statistics Canada, almost 20% of BC households face food insecurity–especially with the rising cost of living. Food rescue centres collect food donated from local grocery stores and sort it into bundles for people to be able to receive with dignity. Our job as volunteers has been to sort through the food to determine what is good, what must be used that same day, and what needs to be composted or thrown away. Through this, we’ve handled many a potato, measured countless lentils and beans, and bonded as a team while growing closer to our community and taking time to give back to the people who help make Greater Vancouver great.

Taking a Fresh Air Approach

We’ve also had the privilege of working with Metro Vancouver Parks to spend a few hours outside helping remove invasive blackberry roots from a section of parkland and get it ready for planting indigenous plants that local wildlife can eat. Through this opportunity, we learned more about the history of the area we were working in, as well as learning about the indigenous plants in the area. We cleared out large rocks and debris from a section of land, secured tarps on the freshly cleared area, and gathered seeds to spread in spaces already cleared of the invasive blackberry roots. It is said that many hands make light work, and truer words could not be used to describe the day with the team.

Santa Hats Off to the Team

To wrap up the year, and as a thank you to our team members who came out and volunteered throughout 2023, we had a very special volunteer day. As you may or may not know, our fearless leader, Flavio, is the undisputed King of Christmas with his elaborate Christmas displays every year with donations to the Surrey Food Bank. What better way to give back to the community during the holidays than to become elves for a day and help out the Burnaby Christmas Bureau’s Toy Room? Our tasks involved helping parents choose toys, books, and clothing for their children to ensure that everyone had something to open during the holidays. We sent parents home with full garbage bags (to hide the presents, of course) and smiling faces. Highlights of the day included helping a mother find STEM toys for her up-and-coming rocket scientist and being able to replace a little boy’s bicycle that had been stolen earlier this year. We were all definitely feeling in the Christmas spirit after that day.

Looking Ahead to Continue Giving Back

Though volunteering is a selfless act, we leave each time having taken away the warm fuzzy feelings of being able to give back, to work hard and have fun as a team, and to sometimes see the smiles of the people we’ve been able to help. It’s always a privilege to be in a position to help others, and being able to take some time away from our desks to give back to the community is part of what makes Snaptech such a great place to work. We look forward to more volunteering opportunities in the years to come.

If you would like to get involved, please reach out!