SBA group Vice President Jolanta Grašienė: „The past few years of the Volunteering Wave have proven social responsibility in the SBA group is not just words, as our company employees actively volunteer on their initiative. It is gratifying that we dedicated a record amount of time—7,302 hours—to good deeds last year. All this activity fosters a more mature society, greater empathy for socially vulnerable people, spreads positive emotions, and promotes the idea of volunteering. This way, the company's team becomes united by shared values, which can help achieve many meaningful accomplishments“.
She said the initiative has brought together nearly 4,900 volunteers from SBA group companies and communities over the past four years. They have participated in over 200 initiatives and contributed almost 19,500 service hours to good causes. Volunteers helped or spent time interacting with hundreds of seniors and children in orphanages, animal shelters, and community theatres.
The most significant initiative is the autumn dune clean-up The Dunes Need You, which broke records in 2024 and attracted over 500 volunteers. Another major initiative is the SBA tree-planting event in spring, during which 300 SBA company employees planted over 24,000 trees across a 7-hectare area.
J. Grašienė continues: „However, what touches and moves volunteers the most are the initiatives related to the lonely, the socially vulnerable and seniors. Then you feel how important human contact is and how long they long for a simple conversation. For example, a group of volunteers from the SBA company Šilutės Baldai visited a lonely 94-year-old senior citizen, Stasys. They cleaned up the surroundings of his home and unsafe old buildings. Volunteers from Visaginas Linija walked for an hour across a swamp path to help a lonely elderly woman prepare for winter: chop wood and clean up. Such initiatives reinforce the feeling of empathy and give more meaning“.
According to J. Grašienė, the Volunteering Wave initiative was launched to introduce employees and the public to the various forms of volunteering and encourage them to continue volunteering with colleagues and family members. The SBA Volunteering Wave has become an example not only in Lithuania but also in Europe. It was recognised as the best internal communication campaign at the PR Impact Awards in Lithuania and as the winner in the internal communication campaign category at the European Excellence Awards. The public voted the SBA group the Community of the Year at the 2023 Responsible Business Awards.
