What our DPGs have been up to recently

Walk for Water

The Water team in Sydney, Australia planned an initiative called Walk for Water Week that went on between October 18th and 22nd.

This is an annual campaign by WaterAid. WaterAid’s mission is to reach everyone, everywhere, with clean water, access to toilets, and good hygiene. During the Walk for Water week, employees were encouraged to walk, run, or ride to raise awareness about the challenging journey that numerous children and women in disadvantaged communities have to travel every day to collect water for daily use.

Last year, Anh Ho, process engineer in the Sydney office, walked 5 kilometres every day for a week carrying 20 litres of water with her. “For just $50, WaterAid could help run a handwashing campaign to reduce the spread of COVID-19, while $150 could help provide hygiene education to frontline healthcare workers,” Anh said. “The more people who know about WaterAid, the more we can achieve together!” This year, the goal was to raise $2000. The team of 15 employees across the Water and Building groups in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria fundraised just over $2300 for WaterAid.

PARK(ing) Day

In mid-September, the Tampa Bay, Florida DPG chapter participated in National PARK(ing) Day where they occupied a parking spot all day with a mini park—a park accessible to the general public created on small, irregular pieces of land, in vacant building lots, along the centers of broad avenues, or even in parking spots. 

PARK(ing) Day began in San Francisco. The group Rebar, an interdisciplinary studio founded in 2004 that operates at the intersection of art, design, and activism, began seeking niche space to create these mini parks. They determined that a cost-effective way to implement the parks would be curbside where meter rates are an incredibly cheap piece of San Francisco real estate. Rebar created Park(ing) as a prototype for open-source urban design accessible to all.

This was a huge effort that took cross-company collaboration, as well as networks and municipalities outside of Stantec.

Cross-company collaboration came from ASLA Florida, employees at AECOM who helped plan, design, and execute the parklet for the day, Anova Furnishing, Brightview Landscaping, and Foreverlawn who supplied the materials to fill the parking spots. Along with help from Stantec employees Emily Henke, Allison Stocker, Frank Domingo, the event went off without a hitch.

PIF Sleep Out

As part of Stantec’s involvement with the Property Industry Foundation (PIF)—an organization that provides much needed housing and care for homeless and disadvantaged youth—the Sydney, Australia team participated in the annual sleep out event on November 11th. The sleep out was to help with fundraising for the next PIF house: a five-bedroom home in Dulwich Hill.

Because of the ongoing pandemic, the sleep out went ahead virtually—employees were encouraged to sleep in their back yard, car, in the office, as long as they followed the New South Wales health advice. “The Stantec team came in third place for most funds raised—not bad for our first year participating!” said Meisha Stevens, acoustics project engineer in our Sydney office, “We exceeded our target of $2,500 by raising $4,057, and people are still donating.”

As for the house in Dulwich Hill, the team put the finishing touches on one of the bedrooms sponsored by Stantec, which will be move in ready before Christmas. “The home is specifically set up for three young Indigenous Australians between 18 and 21 years old who are all at university,” Meisha said, “finishing off their tertiary studies will put them in the best position to move into meaningful jobs and help to give back to the community while gaining the independence they need to break the cycle of homelessness.”

This is a great example of how PIF uses its fundraising efforts to stretch every dollar and leveraging off industry contacts to provide these houses for the operators that will benefit from them.