1999 - 2000 Winners

General Mills

General Mills is being recognized for Siyeza, Inc.—a joint venture between General Mills, Glory Foods, and the Stairstep Initiative, with additional financial backing from U.S. Bancorp.

Siyeza is a food processing plant that General Mills helped establish in the inner city to create quality jobs for unemployed or underemployed inner-city residents. Aside from the company's financial commitment, General Mills has also engaged its employees and retirees in research, financial analysis, marketing, design, engineering, personnel, management, and manufacturing in a volunteer capacity.

To date, Siyeza has created 200 jobs and generated over $10 million in sales. By bringing jobs and self-sufficiency to inner-city neighborhoods, Siyeza is having a broad social and economic impact.

General Mills and its employees have given their time, talent, and energy to dozens of new initiatives addressing trouble spots in communities where the company operates. According to Chairman and CEO Steve Sanger, General Mills believes it can strengthen communities by using its special skills and resources to make neighborhoods a better place for families and the company. He also emphasizes that the company has a responsibility to reach out to others, to take what it knows and do what it can to make a difference.

GTE Corporation

GTE Corporation is being recognized for its GTE Reads program. This program was spurred by the telecommunication provider's recognition that literacy is an under-addressed problem in America. The program also answers the company's need for literate, educated employees and technologically savvy customers.

GTE Reads is a comprehensive national campaign of corporate philanthropy, customer outreach, employee participation, and corporate partner collaboration. It is designed to reach nearly 40 million American adults who have serious problems with literacy.

GTE has partnered with national and community organizations that connect literacy providers to those in need, organizations that include: the National Institute for Literacy, for which GTE Chairman and CEO Charles R. Lee serves as national spokesperson; Literacy Volunteers of America, through which GTE has expanded its Family Literacy Program; and the Communications Workers of America, a 630,000-member union providing grassroots support for GTE Reads.

In addition, GTE has taken the lead in a national literacy awareness campaign by implementing an innovative fund-raising initiative called "Check Into Literacy," which allows GTE's 21 million customers to donate $1 per month to literacy by checking a box on the payment remittance slips in their monthly GTE bills. Once customers have done so, the donation remains on their monthly bill as a line item. Additionally, GTE helps customers and others to support literacy by making donations via their www.superpages.com website. All funds collected through "Check Into Literacy" and the SuperPages.com website go to GTE Reads, and are then distributed to qualified local and national literacy providers. The GTE Foundation will match the first $1 million raised from these efforts.

Other key elements of GTE's campaign include the recruitment of well-known sports figures and celebrities as "literacy champions," scholarships, literacy events, a customer-focused media campaign and Season's Readings, a holiday program during which GTE employees read books to youth, plus collect and donate children's books to Reading is Fundamental®.

Hewlett-Packard Company

HP is being recognized for its Diversity in Education Initiative, designed to improve people's economic potential by better preparing K-12 students to enter college and by increasing the retention, graduation, and employment rates for under-represented engineering students.

In 1997, HP and the HP Company Foundation committed approximately $5 million over five years to the Diversity in Education Initiative. The program supports four urban university and K-12 school partnerships (Boston, MA; El Paso, TX; and Los Angeles and San Jose, CA) that initiate or expand effective programs serving African-American, Hispanic, Native American, and female students. Students and educators are linked across all grade levels and supported by multiple HP operations including philanthropy, K-12 education, university affairs, workforce diversity, and college recruiting.

In addition, 80 HP Scholars have been awarded four-year scholarships of $3,000 per year and, as they enter their freshmen year of engineering or computer science, the promise of three paid summer internships. HP employees also volunteer as mentors and/or hire and manage HP Scholars. Via the HP Scholar E-mail Mentoring Project, during the school year students correspond with an HP employee who encourages the student and offers advice on résumé writing and interviewing. The Diversity in Education Initiative fosters diversity in the workplace by maximizing the potential of not only HP Scholars, but also the mentors and hiring teams who welcome them at HP and support them during their internship.

IBM Corporation

IBM is being recognized for its $40 million Reinventing Education grant program. As the centerpiece of IBM's commitment to fundamental school reform since 1994, Reinventing Education enables IBM to work with schools across the U.S. and abroad to create and implement innovative technology solutions that are raising student achievement. Each project under the program works to overcome a specific barrier to school reform, and collectively the projects address nearly every aspect of education reform: from connecting parents to teachers to data management and analysis, classroom instruction, teacher training, and student assessment. U.S. partners include 21 school systems in states — such as Vermont and West Virginia — and in major cities — such as Atlanta, GA; Boston, MA; Broward County, FL; Charlotte, NC; Chicago, IL; Cincinnati, OH; Detroit, MI; Durham, NC; Houston, TX; Memphis, TN; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; and San Jose, CA. Reinventing Education is also in the countries of Brazil, Ireland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Vietnam. Evaluative reports on the program have demonstrated significant gains in both reading and mathematics achievement, and the Harvard Business School has called Reinventing Education a paradigm for business/education partnerships.

Reinventing Education is helping U.S. schools understand how they can change "business as usual" to achieve high standards. The breadth and depth of the program are extensive, reaching as many as 10 million public school children in more than one-third of the United States with cutting-edge technologies. Reinventing Education has been IBM's main philanthropic focus in education for five years and will continue to be.

U S WEST

U S WEST, a major telecommunications provider, is being recognized for its program, Commitment to Diversity. Throughout the organization, this commitment is evident in its senior leadership, hiring and retention methods, work/life effectiveness, employee resource groups, diversity councils, union/company collaboration, training and education, markets, and communities. With a company officer profile that includes 40 percent women and people of color, U S WEST has become a standard-bearer for U.S. corporations in attracting and retaining a diverse workforce.

Initiatives include:

The Accountability Tool, an in-house quantitative and qualitative measurement model of diversity designed and championed by Chairman, President, and CEO Solomon D. Trujillo.

The U S WEST/CWA Diversity Committee, a partnership between U S WEST and the Communications Workers of America to promote diversity and remove subtle barriers to the overall success of both organizations.

The U S WEST Diversity Learning Academy, which provides required courses for all new employees and supervisors, as well as elective workshops in diversity and sensitivity training.

The Diversity Integration Center, which leads, advises, and monitors the progress of the company in living its philosophy of embracing diversity in all aspects of business.

El Centro Language Center, which addresses the needs of the company's growing Hispanic consumer base with bilingual customer service.

U S WEST Foundation, which assists a number of community organizations, including the Bernie Valdez Hispanic Heritage Center, the Denver Indian Center, the American Indian College Fund, and the Urban League Center for Technology, to name a few.

In addition, the company has developed an extensive communication plan that outlines and promotes its commitment to, and progress on, diversity. Communication vehicles include a monthly newsletter, an internal Website for employees, and a corporate diversity Website link for non-U S WEST employees.