Glaxo Smith Kline has organised an educational and fun-filled Orange Day 2012 at the Maritime Museum in which approximately a hundred enthusiastic students from SOS Children’s Village took part. The Orange Day was divided into one on one interactive career counseling, creative writing/drawing contest around the theme ‘My vision if I were the President of Pakistan’, an engaging museum tour, singing competition, and lunch.
GSK leveraged its strength of a diversified group of people from various academic backgrounds and 25 GSK employees, doing various roles across the organisation, volunteered as counselors for the Orange Day 2012. Each of these counselors had been designated to counsel approximately 4 students, who had expressed their interest in particular fields prior to counseling, over a period of an hour and a half.
Meanwhile, other volunteers were engaged in helping students through a creative writing/drawing contest in which students used pens, colors and their wonderful thoughts to create some masterpieces about their vision for the country if they had all the power. The students’ keenness to learn more from the professionals in the various fields that they wished to be a part of was extremely encouraging for the volunteers and counselors.
Dr. Yousuf Khan, Head of Clinical Research, expressed his opinion of this event in the following words: “Before I began counseling, I wasn’t certain of how helpful my words might be to the students but after counseling the very first student and seeing the level of interest and inquisitiveness, I realized that the Orange Day was one of the very rare chances that these students had gotten for the guidance that they had been seeking and might not have received otherwise. It was a brilliant and eye opening experience!”
The top 3 submissions from the creative writing/drawing contest were awarded prizes which managed to bring bigger smiles to their faces. All submissions were posted on a wall titled ‘The Wall of the Brighter Future’ while GSK employees also took this opportunity to put down their thoughts about this initiative on a wall titled ‘What Orange Day means to me.’
An interesting tour of Karachi’s famous Maritime Museum and a scrumptious lunch marked the end of the day. It is to be noted that Orange Day, introduced globally in January 2009, enables GSK employees to make a significant difference by engaging with their local community.
The initiative allows employees to take one full paid-day to volunteer for a chosen community project, organisation or cause which they support. Not only do the employees benefit from the team building experience but the organization gets an opportunity to play its due role in community building.
GlaxoSmithKline organises Orange Day
