A BGE volunteer participates in a day of service. (Courtesy Photo)
In celebration, recognition and honor of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE) employees teamed up, Jan. 19, for a day of service with three community service organizations across Baltimore. BGE employee volunteers and members of the employee resource group, Exelon’s African-American Resource Alliance (EAARA), Baltimore Chapter, participated in “A Day ON,” with local nonprofits Art with a Heart, The Loading Dock and The Sixth Branch.
BGE employees volunteered at a neighborhood clean-up with The Sixth Branch in East Baltimore’s Darley Park community, creating a safe park for residents and their families. This is the fourth year The Sixth Branch has led a neighborhood clean-up in East Baltimore communities in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The Sixth Branch is a nonprofit organization utilizing the leadership and organizational skills of military veterans to execute aggressive community service initiatives at the local level. The Sixth Branch builds community by bringing together service-mined veterans and civilians to serve its communities on the home front.
BGE employees also volunteered with The Loading Dock, Maryland’s premier building materials reuse facility, which offers affordable, interesting finds to people who need inexpensive housing improvement and building materials and are interested in keeping material out of the waste stream. BGE volunteers spent the day sorting, organizing and cleaning donated building materials, creating displays, relocating donated materials from one area of the warehouse and showroom to another, pricing materials for sale and taking inventory.
BGE employee volunteers and members of the employee resource group, Exelon’s African-American Resource Alliance (EAARA), Baltimore Chapter, spent the day with Art with a Heart, working to finish community enhancement projects in the Art with a Heart studio space. Art with a Heart brings 10,000 visual art classes to abused, neglected and abandoned children; homeless people; battered women and their children; mentally and physically disabled adults; low-income senior citizens; elementary, middle, and high school students; youth in after-school programs; and children receiving long-term health care.
BGE and its employees embrace the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. not just in celebration of today’s Holiday, but year-round. Through BGE’s employee volunteer network, ‘Energy for the Community,’ BGE employees lend their time and passion to corporate citizenship activities. In 2014, BGE employees donated more than 24,000 volunteer hours to various nonprofit organizations. In addition, BGE contributed nearly $3.7 million to charitable organizations in support of more than 275 non-profit organizations across Central Maryland. For more information on BGE’s commitment to corporate philanthropy and employee volunteering efforts, visit bge.com.