For more than 100 years, The Anti-Cruelty Society of Chicago has provided stray dogs and cats with love, care and support. Thanks to a grant from The Humana Foundation, the organization has a vital new tool in its efforts to help animals: technology.

“This Humana grant has transformed everything we do to help animals,” says Robyn Barbiers, President of The Anti-Cruelty Society.  In the past, the Society didn’t have the technological resources to keep track of the animals. For example, “We have to do a daily count. And when you have 458 cats and 91 dogs on any one day, which is what we have today, you need a computer,” she says.

The Anti-Cruelty Society received a $100,000 Humana Communities Benefit grant in 2009 and used the funds to purchase computers and a variety of technology applications. One of those is PetPoint, a Web-based shelter management system that allows the staff to track animals as they move through the system from intake and behavior assessment to medical evaluation and eventually adoption.

The Anti-Cruelty Society, founded in 1899, has an open admission policy for dogs and cats, which means no animal is turned away, and the staff places no time limit on how long an animal can live in the Society’s shelter while waiting to be adopted.

The Humana Communities Benefit grant also helped pay for 30 laptops used for educational outreach, such as an afterschool program designed to teach children to feed and care for animals and treat them with respect.  The Anti-Cruelty Society also purchased computers to use for staff training and education, investigations of animal cruelty and for updating the website (www.anticruelty.org) with pictures of dogs and cats available for adoption.

“Now we can manage our population, we can look at trends, we can run reports,” says Barbiers, “and we couldn’t have done that without Humana’s help.”

Supporting The Anti-Cruelty Society ties in with Humana’s dream of helping people achieve lifelong well-being. As studies have shown, interacting regularly with animals can help people live longer, healthier lives. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pets can help lower blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels; decrease feelings of loneliness and stress; and increase opportunities for exercise, outdoor activities and socialization.

Related links:

• To watch our video about The Anti-Cruelty Society, click here.
• For more information about The Anti-Cruelty Society or to make a donation to the organization, click here.
• Humana grant still benefits nonprofit – 10 years later
• Humana grant helps promote “Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies, Healthy Communities
• Humana grant helps provide A Safe Place for those who need it most
• The Humana Communities Benefit program has awarded more than $1 million to charitable organizations since its inception in Chicago in 2002. In 2012, the program provided grant assistance in Arizona, Austin, Chicago, Greater Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas City, Nashville and New Orleans.

LifeSynch, a Humana subsidiary, offers extensive health behavior resources, including behavioral healthcare, employee assistance program (EAP)/work-life services, behavioral pharmacy services, health coaches and Web-based wellness tools. As part of their commitment to change health behaviors and improve lives, LifeSynch’s health coaches will be contributing a series of articles that demonstrate how easy it can be to make a healthy change.

Earth Day is Monday, April 22, and is the perfect time to look at your surroundings and find ways to make small changes that can result in a positive difference to the environment. A healthier environment will make it easier for all of us to live longer, healthier lives. Here are just a few suggestions to get you started:

• Turn down heat and air conditioner by 2 degrees
• Reuse plastic grocery bags or buy clothe bags to take to the store with you
•  Drink your beverages from a reusable mug or cup
•  Reuse plastic baggies
• Use baking soda and vinegar to clean when you can
• Shorten your shower by three minutes
•  Only run the dishwasher and washing machine when full
•  Air-dry your clothing when possible
• Turn down the water heater a few degrees
• Learn how to make a compost pile
• Go paperless when paying bills
• Use natural light whenever possible
• Shop at a farmer’s market
• Make sure your car tires are inflated correctly to save on gas
• Cut up old T-shirts to use for cleaning instead of paper towels

Earth Day is also about starting new life. Planting trees can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce air pollution, prevent soil erosion, and keep our ecosystem going. Trees create shade which helps with cooling costs in the summer. In the winter, trees help protect your house from cold winds – and reduce heating bills. If you don’t have a place to plant anything outside, put some flowers in a window sill or purchase some indoor plants, which can help clean the air of toxins like formaldehyde, carbon dioxide and benzene.

Before you simply toss out the things you no longer need or use, try to think of alternatives to simply transferring your “trash” into another pile. Can these items be used by someone else? Can it be composted? And to reduce the amount of stuff in the first place, ask yourself whether you can you buy and use less? The following is a list of items and estimated decomposition time (U.S. National Park Service website):

• Orange/banana peels: Up to 2 years
• Cigarette butts: 1 to 5 years
• Plastic bags: 10-20 year
•  Leather: Up to 50 years
• Tin cans: 50 years
• Aluminum cans: 80 to 200 years
•  Plastic six-pack holders: 100 years
• Disposable diapers: 450 years
• Glass bottles: 1 million years
• Plastic bottles: Indefinitely
• Styrofoam: Indefinitely

On April 22, Earth Day, join me in asking: What can I do to be less wasteful? It may be easier than you think.
Lacey Starkey, a learning facilitator and personal health coach/mentor at LifeSynch, a subsidiary of Humana, has a bachelor’s degree in wellness science and a master’s degree in health education. She is also a certified personal trainer and group exercise instructor. In her spare time, she enjoys being outdoors, exercising and staying active in her local community garden.

For Chicago’s WITS tutoring program, the real benefit of a Humana Foundation grant isn’t just the money, it’s the message.

In 2003, WITS (Working in the Schools) received a $100,000 Humana Communities Benefit grant to support the organization’s work matching volunteer tutors with struggling students in 27 Chicago-area public schools.

WITS Executive Director Brenda Palm said that, in addition to the money, “Humana activated their workforce to come out and volunteer in WITS programs. Establishing that partnership served as a tremendous launch pad that allowed us to go to our other members of the corporate community and say, ‘Humana has done this, they’re in a leadership role when it comes to helping our students. Join them. Join us.’”

Among the ongoing WITS initiatives the Humana Foundation grant helped fund:

Power Lunch: WITS sends a yellow school bus to the entrance of a corporate partner’s building, picks up volunteers and takes them to a designated elementary school. Each volunteer works with the same student throughout the year, primarily focusing on reading skills, but also, as Palm said, “To be another positive adult voice in that child’s life. So many of these kids need that.”

Workplace Mentoring: Students in fourth to sixth grade ride a school bus to the offices of a corporate or community partner. Students get help at their tutors’ desks or in a conference room. For some kids, it’s their first time visiting downtown Chicago, riding in an elevator or seeing Lake Michigan. “They’re also, for the first time, sitting at a big fancy conference table and imagining themselves working for one of these corporations,” Palm said. “Teachers tell us kids often act a little more mature, a little more professionally in the classroom after these visits.”

The rewards of the tutor-student relationship work both ways. “I hear from a lot of WITS volunteers that they’re not sure if the student is getting more out of the relationship or if the volunteer is,” Palm said. “That’s the foundation that this organization is built on.”

Ten years after the Humana Communities Benefit grant helped bolster that foundation, WITS’ budget has more than doubled, and the organization now has 48 business and community partners and serves 2,500 students.

“So much of the success we’ve had with our corporate partners we trace back to that initial investment from Humana,” Palm said. “To have a company like Humana say, ‘We believe in the WITS model, we believe in this program, we’ve seen the impact and we’re going to help take WITS to the next level,’  - it’s been invaluable.”

Related links:

• Watch a video about WITS above or by clicking here.
• To learn more about WITS or to find information about volunteering, click here.
• Humana grant helps promote “Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies, Healthy Communities”
•  Humana grant helps provide A Safe Place for those who need it most
• The Humana Communities Benefit program has awarded more than $1 million to charitable organizations since its inception in Chicago in 2002. In 2012, the program provided grant assistance in Arizona, Austin, Chicago, Greater Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas City, Nashville and New Orleans.

Humana’s video about its Team Up 4 Health program has been voted a top 10 finalist in the 2013 Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Film Festival. Humana also made the top 10 in 2012 and is one of only three companies to repeat from last year’s list.

Seventy-four companies submitted videos in this year’s contest, and more than 90,000 people voted. A panel of judges will choose the winner, which will be announced at the 2013 International Corporate Citizenship Conference, April 21-23, in Boston. All 10 videos will be shown at the conference.

The Team Up 4 Health program helps people facing chronic diseases such as hypertension, obesity, heart disease or diabetes make small behavior changes and see powerful results that lead to better health and lifelong well-being. The mission of Team Up 4 Health is to curb these chronic diseases, which are among the most common, preventable and costly health problems in the United States.

To watch the Team Up 4 Health video, click on the screen above or here. If you want to learn more about Humana’s Corporate Social Responsibility efforts, click here.

Humana’s video about its Team Up 4 Health program is featured in the 2013 Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Film Festival. The center’s annual Film Festival showcases corporate citizenship videos and asks the public to vote for their favorite.

Voting will take place from February 14 to March 1. Votes are tallied when public voting ends and the top 10 finalists are reviewed by a panel of judges who chose a winner. The Film Festival winner is announced during the 2013 International Corporate Citizenship Conference, which is held April 21-23 in Boston.

To learn more about the Film Festival, view the full list of video entries and vote, click here. To watch the Team Up 4 Health video, click on the screen above or here. If you want to learn more about Humana’s Corporate Social Responsibility efforts, click here.

Antuan Johnson returned to America SCORES Chicago in 2008 to help coach a new generation of poet-athletes.

An unusual combination forms the core of a youth-development program offered by Humana grant recipient America SCORES Chicago:

Poetry and soccer.

“A lot people might think soccer and creative writing don’t mix,” says Antuan Johnson, 23. “But they really do. I started off as one of their poet-athletes.”

Johnson grew up in North Lawndale, a Chicago neighborhood that averages roughly one homicide every three weeks. Johnson says the schools he attended were frequently under threat of shutdown due to low performance. He started with America SCORES Chicago when he was 10 or 11, and the program changed his life.

Through soccer, Johnson eventually joined teams that traveled to Africa and the Caribbean. He also started performing in poetry slams. “I started writing poetry on my own when I was 7, but through America SCORES, I was able to say, ‘This is what I want to do.’ Without them, I might have drifted for 20 years before I figured out what I wanted to do.”

Johnson graduated from Chicago’s Columbia College with a degree in television writing and producing and now lives in Los Angeles where he’s producing his own record album and working on TV pilot scripts in hopes of breaking into the entertainment industry. “I’m really thankful that an organization like Humana could look at a nonprofit like America SCORES Chicago and recognize what the program is doing to help people become better human beings,” he says.

In 2011, America SCORES Chicago received a $100,000 Humana Communities Benefit grant to develop a new program to increase the number of students the program serves. America SCORES Chicago focuses on K-8 students, primarily through afterschool programs. A change to the school calendar spread students’ vacation weeks throughout the year, creating both a challenge and an opportunity.

“We partner very closely with the Chicago Public Schools,” says America SCORES Chicago executive director Brian Bullington. “We recognized that these intervals were going to potentially leave children with no supervision and nothing to do and the potential for them to either get hurt or get in trouble themselves.”

Humana’s support helped the organization develop a new curriculum called “Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies, Healthy Communities.” America SCORES Chicago develops students’ minds through poetry, their bodies through soccer and their sense of community through service-learning efforts like cleaning up a neighborhood park. “The goal is to help young people to lead healthier lives, develop a love of literacy and help them recognize that they have the power to positively impact their community,” Bullington says.

The “Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies, Healthy Communities” initiative allowed America SCORES Chicago to work with an additional 400 children throughout the school year, roughly doubling the number of students the group serves.
“Humana helped us create a program that turned out to be a wonderful thing, and it continues to this day, serving hundreds of youth across Chicago,” Bullington says.

As America SCORES Chicago has evolved, Antuan Johnson has maintained his ties to the program, returning periodically to give back as a coach.

Johnson recalls the way one kid he worked with described the connection between America SCORES Chicago’s signature activities: “He told me, ‘Soccer – it’s like creative writing with your feet.’ That’s a pretty good description.”

Spoken like a true poet-athlete.

Related links

• For more information, or to make a donation to America Scores Chicago, click here.
• America Scores Chicago is an affiliate of the national nonprofit America Scores.
• The Humana Communities Benefit program has awarded more than $1 million to charitable organizations since its inception in Chicago in 2002. In 2012, the program provided grant assistance in Arizona, Austin, Chicago, Greater Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas City, Nashville and New Orleans.

A New York Cares volunteer clears debris after Hurricane Sandy. (Photo courtesy of New York Cares)

It has been more than two months since Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast, but thousands are still struggling to cope with the devastating aftermath of the superstorm. It will take many more months – and even years – for those who were in its path to complete the monumental task of rebuilding their communities and their lives.

The Humana Foundation, which has a history of providing disaster relief to neighbors near and far, will continue to support the rebuilding efforts by providing a new gift of $100,000 to two East Coast nonprofits, New York Cares and City Harvest. This contribution is in addition to the Humana Foundation’s previous pledge to match up to $200,000 in employee charitable gifts to aid recovery efforts.

“We believe the meaningful work carried out by New York Cares and City Harvest is critical to helping those impacted by Superstorm Sandy regain their sense of security and get back on their feet,” said Virginia Kelly Judd, Executive Director of the Humana Foundation. “These outstanding nonprofits are providing support and services to thousands in need.”

New York Cares is offering support to more than 50,000 residents of Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and lower Manhattan by providing water, meals and toiletries; clearing debris from damaged homes and streets; and expanding its ongoing health, education and revitalization programming at agencies and schools throughout the communities impacted by Sandy.

City Harvest has already provided more than 1.6 million pounds of food to Sandy victims. It is extending its hurricane relief efforts and plans to deliver 51 additional trailer loads of pre-packed grocery food boxes to hurricane relief sites and emergency food providers.

Related articles:

• Humana Foundation Pledges Matching Donations to Hurricane Sandy Relief Efforts
• SeniorBridge: Compassion and commitment during Hurricane Sandy

Clean sheets. Air conditioning. The safety of a locked door. And some dignity.

Those are among the things a $100,000 Humana Communities Benefit grant has helped the Chicago-area nonprofit A Safe Place provide to women and children who are fleeing domestic abuse.

“We are so grateful to Humana for the grant and for giving us the opportunity to offer a higher level of support to the women and children who come to us for help,” said Noelle Moore, director of development for A Safe Place, based in Zion, Illinois. In October 2011, Humana announced that A Safe Place had been chosen from more than 130 applicants to receive the Humana Communities Benefit-Chicago grant.

A Safe Place operates 40 apartments that provide transitional and supportive housing to women and families, some of whom come to the facility directly from a violent home.

“One of the things we’ve been able to do with the Humana grant is purchase new furnishings for the apartments,” Moore said, “so that we can give the families dignified spaces that reflect the respect that we have for these women who’ve made a really difficult decision in leaving a violent relationship.”

Among the women and children who’ve received help at A Safe Place is “Ruth,” who came to the facility at the age of 80. Ruth needed a place to stay after leaving her husband; he had locked her in chains and kept her prisoner in their basement.

“Often, we think of domestic violence as something that happens to the young, which it does,” said A Safe Place executive director Pat Davenport, “but it happens across all ages and social classes, and at A Safe Place, we have to be ready to help anyone who comes to us looking for help.” Improvements to the apartments where clients stay was a priority, Davenport said, because domestic abuse survivors often feel a lack of control over their lives and circumstances. “Staying in your own apartment where you can feel safe, and also where you can control something as basic as the heat and air conditioning is a tremendous comfort to them.”

In the same building as the apartments, A Safe Place offers and individual and family counseling services, including art therapy, which can be particularly helpful for children.

“The kids often haven’t known anything but violence at home, and we work with them to talk about their feelings and a lot of time that comes out in their play and in their art,” said Moore.

A Safe Place serves about 2,500 clients a year, and its services include educational outreach, a courthouse advocacy program and a 24-hour domestic violence help line: (847) 249-4450.

Related links

• Watch this video (Note: Some of the photos shown in this video are for illustration purposes only and are not actual clients of A Safe Place. In order to protect the identity of domestic violence victims, real names are not used.)
• To learn more about A Safe Place, to volunteer or donate, go to www.asafeplaceforhelp.org.
• The Humana Communities Benefit program has awarded more than $1 million to charitable organizations since its inception in Chicago in 2002. The program now provides grant assistance in Arizona, Austin, Greater Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas City, Nashville and New Orleans.

U.S. service members, shown here at the 2012 Humana Challenge, will once again be offered free grounds admission and access to the Humana Military Outpost.

The Humana Military Outpost will host active duty, Reserve and military retirees at the 2013 Humana Challenge in partnership with the William J. Clinton Foundation.

“We are proud to host members of our country’s military at the Humana Military Outpost as our guests; they deserve the opportunity to have a fun and relaxing time with us while watching many of the world’s best golfers up close,” Humana Challenge Executive Director and CEO Bob Marra said. “The Humana Military Outpost is another way we are carrying on the legacy of our tournament founder, Bob Hope. His passion for this golf tournament and unwavering commitment to entertaining the troops were legendary.”

The Humana Military Outpost, introduced during last year’s inaugural Humana Challenge, is a private hospitality pavilion offering climate-controlled indoor seating, outdoor patio seating and complimentary refreshments. The tournament also will offer free grounds admission to active military and veterans and their dependents.

Humana is looking forward to next month’s activities, the action on the course and welcoming veterans to the 2013 Humana Challenge Jan. 14-20 in La Quinta, Calif.

“We’re excited to once again host military men and women at the Humana Military Outpost,” said Mike McCallister, Humana’s Chairman and CEO. “Humana’s close connection to our Armed Forces dates back to the 1990s when Humana Military Healthcare Services was formed. Today, we’re proud to administer health coverage for approximately 3 million active duty and retired military through the TRICARE program.”

Related links
Media Day kicks off 2013 Humana Challenge
Humana Challenge Website
Humana Challenge Twitter
Humana Challenge Facebook

Humana associate Alison Woodcock enjoyed a ride in an IndyCar during a fundraising event for Racing For Kids on Dec. 11 in Louisville, Ky.

A partnership with national nonprofit Racing For Kids® gave Humana associates an opportunity to donate $10,000 to help sick children while experiencing the thrill of racing through downtown Louisville, Ky., in the back of an IndyCar.

“As a company we focus on a lot of important issues,” said Mike McCallister, Humana CEO and Chairman of the Board, as he kicked off the Dec. 11 fund-raising event. “One of them is health and well-being, and especially the education and health of children. We love this program. It moves around the country, visiting children’s hospitals, taking a little of their pain and distraction away from them in a really fun way.”

Humana hosted IndyCar drivers and two Indy-style racecars at a fund-raising event at Humana’s headquarters building in Louisville and asked associates to show their support for sick children. Within a few hours, associates had donated $10,000 to the program. Any associate who donated $100 was offered a ride around the block near Humana’s headquarters building in an IndyCar. Associates who gave $15 were invited to sit in an IndyCar parked in the Humana building lobby, and had their picture taken.

“Since 2004, the support of Humana and Mike McCallister has been critical to the success of Racing For Kids,” said Racing For Kids CEO Pat Wright. “I cannot over-emphasize that fact. There are thousands of hospitalized children who our drivers were able to visit and whose days we were able to brighten because of the support of Humana and The Humana Foundation.”

Founded in Detroit in 1989, Racing For Kids helps fund the health-care needs of children. Hospital visits form the heart of the program, with professional drivers visiting with sick youngsters, posing for pictures, signing autographs and handing out prizes. Drivers like Danica Patrick, Tony Kanaan and Al Unser, Jr. have participated.