Unum Hosts Maine’s Largest Educational Slumber Party for the Past Nine Years—Urban Adventure!

by | May 10, 2014 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

The Financial Services Roundtable recognized Unum on its website as the Community Service 2014 Company of the Week for the Week of April 29, 2014.  This “Company of the Week” is just one example that shows what all Financial Services Roundtable partners do every day. The financial services industry provides extraordinary services to communities throughout America. Employees of Roundtable companies volunteer throughout the year for financial literacy, neighborhood improvement, fundraising, health care, child services, and much more. Every company in the Roundtable dedicates some of their time to community service for the communities they serve.

It’s not a typical day at Unum when school busses from around the state pull up and 130 eighth-grade students hop off with sleeping bags, but it’s a special day employees look forward to each year.  Jobs for Maine’s Graduate (JMG) has been teaming up with Unum to offer Urban Adventure for the past nine years.  Dubbed ‘Maine’s Largest Educational Slumber Party,’ Urban Adventure has students traveling to Unum’s Portland headquarters.  The students visit businesses to learn about various career opportunities, and the education it takes to follow that pathway.  They were also exposed to careers in IT by employees in Unum’s Global Services department and participated in a special hands-on event.  Unum executives also treated the students to a special version of “What’s My Line,” to expose the students to different careers at Unum and to help break down gender bias for certain jobs.

This event changes lives, and one colleague shared, “A friend of a friend relayed a story about how her daughter did the sleepover event at Unum and how it changed her life.  Apparently she originally was not thinking about a four-year college because she didn’t think she was smart enough and wanted to do a certification to be a vet tech.  After spending the day and evening here, she got to learn a lot more about business and technology and she had a wonderful learning experience.  It also boosted her self-confidence as she realized she was just as smart as the other students and is now thinking about going to college for computer science.”

Source:  http://fsroundtable.org/post/comp-of-week/unum-hosts-maines-largest-educational-slumber-party/

For more information:  www.jmg.org