leaving work for good Environmental groups all over the world received help from Patagonia employees who volunteered this year through the company’s Environmental Internship Program. Through the program, which is now in its 15th year, environmentally minded employees lend their passion and expertise to the nonprofit organization of their choice for up to two months with full pay and benefits. To date, some 600 employees have participated – 64 of them this year. Dealer Services rep Ting Hammond helped the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association promote the use of alternative transportation in Taipei, Taiwan, while Louise Danel, a buyer from our Annecy office, built solar ovens in rural Bolivia with NGO Bolivia Inti. Elizabeth Ruiz, a retail associate in our SoHo store, worked with Surfrider Foundation in Puerto Rico to reduce the amount of trash on island beaches. Pasadena store employees rock-hopped through Southern California watersheds eradicating invasive plants, and Bryn Pitterle, a product developer in Ventura, Calif., spent two months on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula monitoring the health of waters in the Cook Inlet. Not all internships entailed fieldwork. Drew Story, an information technology (IT) fellow in Ventura, used his considerable experience to develop a Web advocacy tool for the Nevada Wilderness Project in Reno, Nevada. For some mysterious reason, 2007 was the year of the turtle, with four employees devoting themselves to the 46 Patagonia employee Evan Heiser holds a pair of leatherback hatchlings during an environmental internship with Voluntarios Pretoma at Playa San Miguel, Costa Rica. Ricard Piulats
environmental internship program
health and welfare of the easygoing reptile. Retail coordinator Evan Heiser measured, tagged and monitored olive ridleys nesting on Pacific beaches in Costa Rica, working with Voluntarios Pretoma. Anthony Garcia, an IT employee in Ventura, volunteered with San Diegobased Pro Peninsula to assess the group’s IT capabilities and create a PowerPoint presentation about threats to loggerheads in Baja California. Web designer Adrienne Primosch, also worked on behalf of loggerheads, in this instance on the other side of the Pacific, where she confronted threats to nesting turtles and their hatchlings on the beaches of Japan’s Yakushima Island. Freshwater turtles benefited as well, as staff from our St. Paul, Minn., store paddled canoes to help with a basking turtle survey sponsored by the Mississippi River Fund.
This Year’s Internships
The $70,000 allocated by the company to the Environmental Internship Program went quickly this year. The funds are administered by a volunteer committee made up of employees, who read internship applications and parcel out the money. So to stretch the budget further, a few enterprising committee members took the unprecedented step of asking department heads to cover the internship costs of their employees with money from their own budgets.
Ting Hammond (Dealer Services) Wild at Heart Legal Defense Assoc., Taiwan
Every department head said yes, knowing their investment would pay dividends when employees returned to their desks refreshed and recharged from one of Patagonia’s most popular and meaningful programs.
Brian Halvorsen (Ventura Store) Surfrider - Ventura County Chapter, California
Lisa Myers (Enviro Dept.) Grupo Lobo, Portugal Maggy Wages (R&D Systems) Raincoast Conservation Society, Canada Bucky Ballou (Dillon Store) Institute for Bird Populations, California Kevin Wikander (Internet Fulfillment) The Sugar Pine Foundation, California Bryn Pitterle (Alpine/Ski) Cook InletKeeper, Alaska Mikey Stewart (Washington, DC, Store) Hope for Haiti, Haiti Adrienne Primosch (Internet) Yakushima Umigame Kan, Japan Anthony Garcia (Information Technology) Pro Peninsula, Baja California Washington, DC, Store Potomac Conservancy, Virginia Evan Heiser (Retail Coordinator) Voluntarios Pretoma, Costa Rica St. Paul Store Mississippi River Fund, Minnesota Jessica Gilbert (St. Paul Store) Ecology Action Center, Illinois Leigh Bost (Atlanta Store) Mountain Voices Alliance and Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition, North Carolina Drew Story (Information Technology) Nevada Wilderness Project, Nevada
Andy Mitchell (Dealer Services) Save Our Wild Salmon, Washington Max Müller (Munich Store) Bergwaldprojekt, Germany Lisa Kinigadner (Munich Store) Bergwaldprojekt, Germany Haleiwa Store Waimea Valley Audubon Center, Hawaii Eric Speakman (Portland Store) Zenger Farm, Oregon Louise Danel (Logistics, Pat Europe) Bolivia Inti - Sud Soleil, Bolivia Alyssa Firmin (Creative Services) Growing Solutions, California Pasadena Store Habitat Works of Southern California, California Elizabeth Ruiz (NYC SoHo Store) Surfrider - Puerto Rico
Whintes Brice (Sample Room) Wind River Alliance, Wyoming Jake Martin (Marketing) Surfbreak Protection Society, New Zealand Su Ruh (Westport Store) East Coast Greenway Alliance, Rhode Island Fabri di Piazza (NYC UWS Store) Waterkeeper Alliance, New York
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