In conjunction with the Omnicom European Financial Conference, volunteers from all over the globe will be working together on September 11th to revitalize parts of the Kids Village outside of Budapest, Hungary.

The Kids Village was founded in 1957 and looks after children of all ages, sexes, abilities and nationalities. It is based in Fót which is approximately twenty minutes from the center of Budapest and set in 40 hectares of park land which is open to the general public. There a number of residential, educational and medical buildings on the site used by the Kids Village.

Omnicom volunteers will be painting murals, building an outside play area and small animal enclosure, building a ‘World Compass’ garden and assembling furniture to be used in a facility recently renovated by the Kids Village.

Please check out these ‘before’ pictures of the site as well as the sketches for some of the work to be performed:

For more on this event check back soon as we’ll continue to post information.  To become involved in the future, please click on ‘Get Involved’.

On behalf of the OmnicomCares team and the St. Jude’s Ranch for Children, we would like to thank every volunteer that joined in the 2010 Service Project Day in Las Vegas on June 13^th. This year’s service project was an enormous success. Nearly 150 volunteers proved once again that many hands make light work. The St. Jude’s Ranch for Children is a remarkable facility with an extraordinary mission and history. It was a privilege to partner with them and with the team from Care Force, Hello Las Vegas and our sponsors. 

There was no shortage of praise for the work done at the St. Jude’s Ranch for Children, but as Dennis Hewitt, Omnicom Group Treasurer and OmnicomCares volunteer, reminds us, the real value of each service project is the impact we are able to make on the lives of children today and tomorrow .

We would also like to thank you for supporting the OmnicomCares program online, on Facebook and at past events. We hope you are able to join us for the next service project.

Photos from the day:

On June 12^th, the OmnicomCares program will proudly join forces with St. Jude’s, Care Force, Perini Building Company and a host of local and national sponsors to revitalize the Boulder City St. Jude’s Ranch for Children Campus. More than 140 volunteers are expected to participate in this year’s service project, which coincides with Omnicom Group’s annual Financial Conference in Las Vegas.- Volunteers will refurbish one of the facility’s primary public buildings, including the Ranch’s Recycled Greeting Card mailroom where children recycle old greeting cards to earn money, conserve paper and spread joy.

For more information about this year’s event or how you can become involved in the future, visit bookmark www.OmnicomCares.com and visit the OmnicomCares Facebook page.

To date, sponsors for this year’s event include:

Perini Building Company – www.perini.com

CDW – www.cdw.com

Sarcom – www.sarcom.com

AFD – www.afd-inc.com

Getty Images – www.gettyimages.com

St. Jude’s Ranch for Children Director of Communications, Sarah Sheehan was nice enough to drop by (virtually speaking) and tell us more about the upcoming service day project at the Ranch on Saturday. Take a moment to watch Sarah’s short interview.

Also, to learn more about the Ranch and the remarkable work that St. Jude’s does for children around the country and to join the cause, visit them on Facebook here

The Omnicom Cares program is about understanding that every child matters and there is work each of us can do to help. To spread the word and raise awareness and money, we talk about our programs and our events on this website, on our Facebook page and throughout the organization. Sometimes however, there is no need for words. A picture says it all.

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These remarkable images tell the story of Nur Salam, a 24 hour drop-in and crisis center that provides a safe and healthy environment for children in the Chow Kit district of Kuala Lumpur. Initially started as a day care center, Nur Salam was opened in 2001 by the Malaysian Department of Welfare. The expanded center  opened officially in April 2007 as a program of Yayasan Salam Malaysia, with PAKK a key partner.

Over 460 children are currently registered with Nur Salam, most coming after school and on weekends. Increasingly, children are staying in the dormitory space as well. Over time, Nur Salam hopes to help these children grow into happy, healthy, productive adults.

To help this amazing facility, OmnicomCares raised more than $11,000 USD to support and maintain their essential programs. We were able to raise that money through an auction (video highlights here) as well as a very successful event held at Nur Salam itself.

Dear readers, fans and followers of OmnicomCares-

We here have all been struck by the incredible level of devastation in Haiti and the ever-growing death toll on the island. Initial help is already on its way to aid the Haitians in such desperate need of food, water, shelter and basic medical services. OmnicomCares.com believes that the infrastructure already in place will channel aid quickly and efficiently.

We recommend that you go to either CNN’s or Fox News’ lists of reputable organizations and choose an organization from these vetted lists. The window of time to help with Haitians’ most immediate needs may be closing, but they will clearly need help in so many ways months and even years from now.

As part of our work with the Eugenio Maria de Hostos school in Yonkers, OmnicomCares is also holding a book drive, open to the entire Omnicom Family. They need to purchase 20 book sets to support their HEART curriculum (Humanity, Ethics, Aesthetics, Respect, Responsibility, Trust), and this is where everyone’s generosity can help out. If you would like to help the school, but cannot come to far-off Yonkers, please feel free to send a check to the following address:

Checks should be made out to ‘The Volunteer Center’; please put ‘Omnicom Book Drive’ in the memo field. Checks should be mailed to:
Robyn Pyles
Omnicom Capital
One East Weaver Street
Greenwich CT, 06831

Any amounts are accepted, as is cash. Please also include an email address so we can send you the tax deduction information.

Once again, thank you for everyone’s enthusiasm for participating in this worthwhile cause. And for those of you who will be joining us, we look forward to seeing you Saturday!

After so much work renovating the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Microsociety School a few weeks back, it’s not surprising that so many folks decided to put together their own films from the event. Here, again, is a sample of just how much fun good work can be, as well as a bit more on what this whole OmnicomCares effort is all about. Thanks so much to everyone who joined us, and please don’t forget to click on the ‘book drive’ sticker if you’d like to help more!

We’ve been a little curious here about the name of the school we’ll be working on come Saturday. So we opened up the google and did some research… and found a chunk of world history none of us had been aware of before.

We discovered that Eugenio Maria de Hostos was an activist in Latin America around the turn of the century. He worked on behalf of social justice and independence for all people throughout his life. He was both an administrator and a teacher; he founded a teaching school in the Dominican Republic that promoted advanced teaching methods and helped reform schools in Chile. While in Chile he gained the right for women to be admitted to public schools and to receive training in law and medicine. He wrote books, articles and treatises on social justice, many of which are still widely read today. Many of us were particularly moved by the epitaph he wrote for himself:

“I wish that they will say: In that island (Puerto Rico) a man was born who loved truth, desired justice, and worked for the good of men.”

Something we can probably all aspire to.

We all had a great time at Saturday’s event… and as this video will prove, there is no reason why fun can’t mix with elbow grease! We’ll be posting lots and lots of pictures from the event on our Facebook fan page in the coming days and weeks, so please “fan” us there if you’re on Facebook. If not, maybe twitter’s more your thing? Whichever way you choose, please follow us to keep up on the latest news and events.

Thanks again to an amazing team of over 100 volunteers! As the school’s principal said in the previous post, you really are an extraordinary group of individuals, and make us all proud to be part of the Omnicom Family.