Angela Gomez, a Training Officer at AXA Philippines, has always been involved in volunteering since she was in High School. When she found out about the AXA Hearts in Action program, she was thrilled. “It gave me another opportunity to help out outside my working time. I was also happy that one of the outreach activities was to read to children because education is really close to my heart and my daily job. It is a way to touch their lives and make dreams come true even for just a few hours on a Saturday.” She knows first-hand the value of this type of volunteering activity, because the children that she had previously reached out to, have already counted several graduates among them. “It is so easy to just sleep in on a weekend morning, she says, but joining the AXA Hearts in Action program gives you something to wake up for. It is about knowing that we can make a difference. I can’t really explain the feeling you get from joining activities like these. Being able to help people is something that gives you a sense of fulfillment different from the other successes and achievements that you already have. You feel happy and proud of yourself for doing good, seeing the beneficiaries, especially with the children.”
For Angela, when you volunteer at AXA Hearts in Action and help people, “it is not just them making you realize how lucky you are, you learn from them too. It makes you want to embrace life more.” Another activity she joined was held at the Tahanang Walang Hagdan to build a community among disabled members of society, giving them employment to support their families. “I saw how they strived despite their limitations and it inspired me at my own work here at AXA”, she confesses.
On a different note, the activity has impacted her own life as well, since she met her fiancé at the storytelling sessions. Regarding the impact of volunteering on her daily work, Angela reflects, “It puts more meaning into your work, especially as we are in the industry of helping Filipinos secure their future. With my job, I teach people how to sell insurance, with volunteering experiences, teaching has another new dimension. When you have experiences such as these, your life becomes more meaningful. You learn to complain less and be more appreciative of what you have, and how lucky you are to be able to help.”
For Monica Novoa, an Administrative Professional at AXA Colombia, volunteering gave her “the foundations that she instilled in her home regarding the importance of sharing”. She shares with us her experience on one of the solidarity action that marked her the most: “I participated in the “Unusual” corporate responsibility program, a project a project carried out in partnership with Junior Achievement Foundation Colombia (FJAC), where we shared several sessions with tenth grade boys, realizing dynamics and building concepts of the insurance world. It was an experience where I contributed some knowledge to those little dreamers and they, in turn, impregnated me with their desire to eat the world, their madness, their irreverence and the great characteristic that young people have in the actuality of adapting to different media and different topics with great ease. This activity contributed to my professional and personal life. The closeness with the boys during the process made that, at the moment of the delivery of the program certificates, I felt lucky to have passed through their lives, even for a short time”.
“For me it is very satisfying and proud to belong to an organization that thinks and directs efforts to social issues. It is very important that people know AXA not only for being one of the best insurers in Colombia and in the world, but also for worrying about the environment where it is”, she concludes.
AXA Hearts in Action is our international program intended to AXA employees, through which they can carry out volunteering activities addressing various issues (for example disability, education, environment, health and social welfare). In 2017, more than 52,000 volunteering acts in at least 38 entities were counted, representing approximately 93,000 hours devoted to community investment projects for the benefit of society.
