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Perfetti Van Melle employees spend ‘Community Days’ helping local charitable organizations


Perfetti Van Melle employees participate in Community Day benefitting Sweets Cheeks Diaper Bank (Photo from Perfetti Van Melle)

Perfetti Van Melle, the home of Airheads and Mentos candy, gum, and mints in the U.S., is continuing its annual tradition of a day of service by its more than 550 employees. This year, not knowing what challenges COVID-19 would bring next, the company got creative to find a more flexible approach to its Community Day. It created multiple smaller group volunteer days in August/September, helping several local organizations.

This week’s Community Day events had Perfetti Van Melle Erlanger manufacturing and operations employees taking time out of their work shifts making Airheads and bottling Mentos gum, to wrap and prepare disposable diaper packs for distribution to local low-income families by Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank. The Aug. 17 service day is just one of many different Community events the candy company employees are doing this year.

(Photo from Perfetti Van Melle)

“While the pandemic made it challenging to confidently plan for big all-hands events, our business has also grown a lot, creating new jobs, even during the pandemic,” said Sylvia Buxton, president and CEO of Perfetti Van Melle North America Buxton. “It’s pushed us to find a new way to get an even larger group of employees involved in serving our community. Trying a ‘season of service’ approach this year, each part of our business had the flexibility to decide on a community project that fit their team size, their shifts — even middle of the night shifts — AND fit our company goal of helping kids and families in our local area.”

“We have been blown away by the support of Perfetti’s employees this month.” said Megan Fischer, CEO and founder of Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank. “Early COVID restrictions showed us just how critical our volunteers are, and Perfetti employees have allowed us to work ahead so we have more stability for our partner agencies and the families we serve. We’re so grateful to Perfetti for not only believing in our mission to end diaper need, but also for working with us to create creative solutions to volunteering on-site at their facility.” 

In August and September, Perfetti is investing time and dollars in its employees and local charities to make a real community impact.

2022 Perfetti Van Melle Community Day facts and figures:

• 550+ volunteers from Perfetti Van Melle, contributing 2,400+ hours over 13 project days in August and September.

• Donations of ~$70,000 invested by Perfetti in these 3 charities to activate the events.

• Projects with local organizations: Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank, Ronald McDonald House of Greater Cincinnati, and Matthew 25: Ministries.

• Sweet Cheeks: Among the 5 Perfetti employee teams doing a Sweet Cheeks project for Community Day through August and September, the organization estimates over 500,000 diapers will be wrapped and processed. Last week alone the teams wrapped and processed over 84,000 diapers and created 1,120 period kits. This week’s Perfetti volunteers processed another 200,000 diapers plus thousands of period kits.

• These events have been organized by Perfetti Van Melle teams: supply chain/distribution center, operations/factory, marketing, executive, finance, sales.

Pre-pandemic Community Day:

• Past Perfetti Van Melle Community Day projects have shut down production and business on one day for all employees to do projects like building two accessible playgrounds (NKY/Cincinnati), taking over The Giving Fields, and beautifying inner city schools/neighborhoods with Keep Cincinnati Beautiful/CPS.

• In 2020 and 2021 because of COVID, instead of hands-on Community Day projects, the company made significant financial donations to support United Way’s Digital Equity internet project for students learning remotely and its first College Success Kits project for first gen NKY college-bound students.

Perfetti Van Melle


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