It is often said: do good for others and it will come back to you in unexpected ways. Playtech and its employees care about providing a helping hand and giving back to our community, so this August, we decided to take a special chance to deliver happiness and reach out to help the ones in need, together.
Most Estonians have heard of the charity rubber duck race (‘Pardiralli’) held at Kadrioru canal in Tallinn each summer. The charity initiative is organized by Estonian Association of Parents of Children with Cancer to raise awareness and help families raising children diagnosed with cancer. This duck race is the only source of financing for the association and the money they manage to raise by selling participating ducks to kind people and companies, they will use for:
- Treatment of children diagnosed with cancer not covered by the Health Insurance Fund
- Travel costs of the families related to receiving treatment abroad
- Occupational therapy and recreation for little cancer-fighting patients in hospitals
- Psychological counselling for families
- Their Support Centre dedicated to building the network and organising seminars or summer camps for families in a similar situation
- This year, they also donate 30 000€ of the money raised to the Estonian Chamber of Disabled People, to support parents taking care of their severely disabled child 24/7
Good health is a matter of high importance to Playtech employees and therefore promoting health and active lifestyle is also one of the focus areas we are addressing in our corporate social responsibility activities and charitable efforts.
To join our forces in providing a helping hand to the families that are in desperate need of support, help and hope, we invited our employees to support the duck race by buying personal rubber ducks to send to the race for them. To encourage personal donations, Playtech matched each donation that team members personally made to support the duck race and families facing cancer.
This meant that Playtech promised to double each euro spent on supporting this cause by employees. In that way, even a small donation from a team member would double itself and have double the impact. This kind of ‘matched giving’ is popular worldwide and also at several Playtech locations.
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The charity initiative proved to be highly popular among our generous employees. Together with the personal contribution from our kind employees, we managed to donate as much as 3716€ to the Estonian Association of Parents of Children with Cancer, sending 119 ducks to the race for us. Overall, this year’s duck race hosted 15 247 participating ducks and managed to raise a record of 414 564 euros!
We at Playtech
cheered for our ducks, watching the broadcast of the duck race on TV, illustrated
with personal stories of families whose children are suffering from cancer and
will receive help from the donations that we made.
Last year, Playtech as
a company donated 1000€ to the duck race. Together with our employees, we
managed to make almost four times as much impact! The power of helping lies in joining
forces, so we encourage all companies to follow this example and encourage
practicing matched giving. "Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much," as Helen Keller has nicely said.
