Across VCNA, our approach to community involvement and sponsoring is guided by Our VC Way values of Open Dialogue and Lasting Results, as well as a simple belief: the people closest to our operations are best positioned to understand what their communities need.
Each VCNA business unit is empowered to build local partnerships that reflect the unique priorities of their regions and communities. This approach allows our teams to engage in Open Dialogue with local organizations, listen to community voices, and act in ways that create meaningful, Lasting Results.
We ensure that community engagement is not one-size-fits-all but rooted in respect for particularities of the communities where we live and work. This is how Our VC Way comes to life!
Our VC Way value of Open Dialogue shapes how we approach every community relationship. Rather than arriving with our own agenda, each of our business units listens to the organizations and neighbours around our operations to understand what is needed most. VCNA community involvement looks different in Charlevoix, Michigan, than it does in Toronto or Bowmanville, Ontario, and that is by design.
The causes our teams support reflect the diversity of our people, their experiences, and the priorities of their regions. Housing affordability, food security, environmental care, and youth development are among the areas where VCNA teams have invested their time and resources, because those are the areas where local conversations pointed us.
VCNA’s volunteer initiative, CommUNITY Builders, connects employees across business units with nonprofit partners from food banks and fundraising events to environmental cleanups and affordable housing builds.
In Toronto, our team enjoys volunteering at the Daily Bread Food Bank. On one visit, we packed over 450 pounds of granola and 800 pounds of pasta for distribution across a city where one in four households faces food insecurity.
On another commitment in Detroit and Fergus, Ontario, 29 VCNA employees contributed 203 hours through Habitat for Humanity, supporting projects that helped 847 Canadians access affordable homeownership. In Bowmanville, St. Marys Cement sponsored the Clarington Toros at the Josh Bailey Classic Tournament on Family Day weekend, bringing local families together around their young athletes. VCNA teams in Chicago and Bowmanville have also shown up for the Breast Cancer Walk and the Racing for Health Gala, and crews across both countries take part in spring and fall cleanups to restore green spaces and protect watersheds near our sites.
What holds all of this together is genuine care for our communities. Each time our teams return to these causes, we learn more about what the community needs, deepen relationships with the people doing the work, and reinforce the Lasting Results principle at the core of Our VC Way. Strong communities are not built through grand gestures; they are built by showing up.
