One of the most-innovative and inspiring recent CSR efforts is Odyssey Teams’ Helping Hands program, which has resulted in some 11,500 prosthetic hands being constructed for recipients located in 67 primarily developing countries since its inception about four years ago.
But arranging for a facilitator to travel on-site for instruction added a significant cost to the program. Enter the Build-a-Hand kit, which Odyssey (http://odysseyteams.com) launched about a year-and-a-half ago. The kit can be used by groups of practically any size, wherever and whenever they choose.
“To cascade the program throughout [many different] organizations we had to come up with a cheaper version,” says Lain Hensley, COO and owner of Odyssey Teams. “A lot these organizations even have a facilitator that can manage a philanthropic session.”
Each kit, which costs about $2,500 for 30 participants, includes a step-by-step guide to each portion of the program; the pieces to each prosthetic limb; videos that drive home the team-building message behind the philanthropy; and carrying cases for delivery of the prosthetic hands.
The company’s LifeCycles program is considered the first of the “build-a-bike” programs that have since become a staple of the CSR team-building world, and it also offers a Playhouse Challenge that builds playhouses for toddlers.
Odyssey’s newest product—in fact, it didn’t even have a name at press time—involves building skateboards for needy kids and letting them come in to decorate them. As a bonus, the kids also get to spread the joy by building a skateboard for a friend.
But no matter what the project, Odyssey believes the outcome should always end up inspiring the builder while benefitting the receiver.
“Our ‘magic bullet’ is the blending of those two things,” Hensley says, “so the program doesn’t seem like a recess break from the meeting.”
