#Breckenridge, Colorado.
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| Courtesy Breckenridge Ski Resor |
Five years ago, Vail Resorts started an annual volunteer day with 400 employees and six projects. This year, about 1,600 Vail Resorts employees gathered Saturday, Sept. 20, to complete 13 trail, habitat and school restoration projects as part of the company’s newly launched EpicPromise brand.
Echo, the branch of the company focused on environmental and community sustainability efforts, will now be known as EpicPromise, a new brand designed to expand the company’s positive engagement to resort guests and residents of the communities where the company operates.
The name change doesn’t change how the company gives, said Kristen Petitt Stewart, spokeswoman for Breckenridge Ski Resort.
EpicPromise simply aims to highlight the company’s commitment, better integrate those efforts with all the company’s operations and divisions and inspire guests to identify and commit to a personal environmental or social improvement project.
“We have a special responsibility to preserve and protect the iconic landscapes, which frame our mountain resorts, and help strengthen our local communities. We have implemented many sustainable practices at our company for years, and now we have the opportunity to inspire others to follow our lead,” said Rob Katz, chairman and CEO for Vail Resorts, in a news release. “EpicPromise is how we will work together to create a more promising future for generations to come.”
On Saturday, about 250 company employees from across the Breckenridge and Keystone resorts, Colorado Mountain Express and the Vail Resorts lodging division volunteered with their families to work on the Wirepatch trail in French Gulch.
They constructed about 3,200 feet of new trail, Stewart said, and partners and other volunteers included the Friends of the Dillon Ranger District, Keystone Science School, the town of Breckenridge, the county Open Space and Trails Department and a local Boy Scouts troop.
Other Vail Resorts projects around the country included planting sugar pines critical to habitat in Tahoe, making a children’s facility feel more like home for kids in Jamaica, restoring habitat in Minnesota, rebuilding a popular nature center in Michigan, making Grand Teton National Park’s popular Jenny Lake more accessible and rehabilitating schools in Truckee.
With at least 100 volunteers at most of the 13 projects, employees quickly rack up company-sponsored volunteer hours, said Laura Parquette, Keystone Resort spokeswoman. That’s something the company is promoting more with its Epic Volunteers program, introduced last year.
The program allows year-round and seasonal full-time employees with at least 750 hours to apply for 40 hours of paid time off they use to volunteer with an effort they choose.
Parquette said she knows of employees who have used that program to volunteer with all kinds of organizations from local animal shelters to international children’s nonprofits.
Courtesy of the Summit Daily News.
