Every year the city of Pontiac, Michigan hosts an event called “Picking Up Pontiac,” where local community members volunteer to clean up the streets and local houses, and help out neighbors in need to spread kindness and joy throughout the community. This year, volunteers of the Technomics' Troy, Michigan office met up early one Saturday morning to support the Picking Up Pontiac event and volunteer around their community.

Lexi Meade, an employee-owner at Technomics, saw this event as a great opportunity to engage with other fellow employee-owners outside the office while being able to give back to a community that is just a short drive from the office. Lexi, who has been at Technomics for just over 4 months, wanted to re-ignite community involvement at the Technomics Troy office post-pandemic and get others actively involved in the community. As a previous member of Alpha Phi Omega, a community service fraternity, Lexi was familiar with how to seek out local events and lead the coordination efforts to rally additional employee-owners.

The original volunteer idea was to engage with a local soup kitchen, such as the Grace Centers of Hope, but when she reached out, the center had informed her that they had an upcoming event that needed additional volunteers - “Picking Up Pontiac.”

On the morning of the event, the Technomics team headed out early, in their matching gear, and were ready to lend a helping hand. They worked as a group to clean up trash around the area of a house and garden. The Technomics team managed to finish their cleanup early, and shifted their efforts towards helping other volunteers at one of the other houses on the street.

As volunteers were going about their work, they managed to strike up conversations with local community members and had discovered that one of the locals had worked at one of the team member’s favorite restaurants just outside of the office. They were excited to share a connection and looked forward to reconnecting at their next team outing.

Employee-Owner volunteers (from left to right): John Liss, Jordan Smith, Lexi Meade, Miranda Reinhart, Samantha Hair

Overall, it was a great opportunity for coworkers to meet outside of the office, volunteer to help make a difference in their local community, and build relationships – a virtue shared by fellow employee-owner.