Today, more than 80,000 volunteers are making change happen across the country and around the world as part of Comcast Cares Day, our company’s 13th annual day of service. Comcast and NBCUniversal employees, joining with our friends and families, worked hand-in-hand with local non-profit organizations to give back.  

Together, we built playgrounds and picnic tables, and refurbished school bleachers and bike racks. We cleaned beaches, mulched, raked, and seeded. We mounted televisions, created computer areas, and installed wiring for cable and Internet. We scrubbed windows, removed graffiti, and picked up trash. We stocked food banks and prepared care packages for the elderly and the indigent. We improved baseball and softball fields and basketball courts. 

Thanks to the support and enthusiasm of our employees and community partners, Comcast Cares Day continues to grow in impact and momentum. Since the first Comcast Cares Day in 2001, more than 500,000 volunteers have contributed 3 million hours of service. Comcast Cares Day has also become a global effort, with NBCUniversal this year hosting projects in at least a dozen countries overseas, including England, Australia, Singapore, and Japan. 

Among today’s 800-plus projects:

  • Less than a mile from the Universal Studios Lot, at Los Angeles’ Rio Vista Elementary School, NBCUniversal teamed up with City Year to paint murals that celebrate and reflect the student body’s multicultural diversity.

  • At Philadelphia’s Germantown Boys & Girls Club, built in 1887 and one of the nation’s oldest Clubs, experts from HGTV and the DIY and Food Networks came together to renovate the Club’s arts and crafts room.

  • For the second year in a row, volunteers in Houston partnered with the PTSD Foundation of America to make their Camp Hope headquarters more comfortable and inviting for returning veterans and their families. 

  • In Italy, NBCUniversal employees – along with an army of Despicable Me minions –treated children battling cancer to a special screening of Despicable Me 2 at Rome’s Peter Pan Onlus Association. 

 As for me, I spent Comcast Cares Day with my family and 550 other volunteers at Nashville’s Jere Baxter Middle School. Together, we painted the school’s hallways, landscaped the grounds, and gave students a bright and clean place to which to return to Monday morning. When I look at the transformation taking place here at Jere Baxter, I am in awe of the impact all of my fellow Comcast Cares Day volunteers are making on a global scale. I couldn’t be more proud of the lasting change we are creating in our communities.