Comcast Employees Roll Up Their Sleeves and Volunteer at El Centro de la Raza for Mayor Harrell’s One Seattle Day of Service

Comcast celebrated Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s One Seattle Day of Service on Saturday by mobilizing 250 Comcast employee volunteers to work alongside El Centro de la Raza staff and community volunteers to clean, paint, and provide services at El Centro de la Raza (The Center for People of all Races). The volunteer event helped beautify the El Centro de la Raza campus on Beacon Hill as it continues to re-open for public services in 2023. The volunteer project was part of Mayor Harrell’s One Seattle Day of Service – a citywide day of volunteerism to give back and take action to improve the city of Seattle. The day brings together a diverse group of public, private, and non-profit partners and organizations, which provide a wide array of service opportunities including cleaning and beautification, gardening, and restoration, helping neighbors in need, and more.

Comcast’s day of service is part of a national partnership with Keep America Beautiful – a national nonprofit that inspires and educates people to take action every day to improve and beautify their community environment. The organization provides the expertise, programs, and resources to help people end littering, improve recycling, beautify America’s public spaces, and restore and support resilient communities. For the health and safety of the community, El Centro de la Raza offered its most essential services in-person during the pandemic with the rest of its programs offered virtually or in a hybrid model. It resumed in-person events and its 43 programs and services on-site earlier this year. El Centro de la Raza is the largest Latino-serving nonprofit in Washington State and offers 126 units of affordable housing, bilingual childcare, a food bank, digital literacy programs, workforce development, and social services for diverse communities across Puget Sound. More than 20,000 people benefit from its programs and services annually. “The generous donation of time and effort from Comcast’s employees will be instrumental in helping us offer more services sooner on our campus,” said Estela Ortega, executive director, El Centro de la Raza. “This is just part of our ongoing partnership with Comcast, and we are excited to collaborate on more interesting initiatives with them later this year.” “El Centro de la Raza is an essential part of the Puget Sound community and supporting them through partnership, investment, and volunteering is key to Comcast’s ongoing support of diverse communities in our region,” said Rodrigo Lopez, senior vice president of Comcast Pacific Northwest Region. “The work our volunteers put in will make a positive impact and is something our Comcast team in Washington will always remember.”

The volunteer effort from Comcast is part of Team UP – Comcast’s national employee volunteer program. Team UP is an always-on, 365-days-a-year effort that brings Comcast teams together and provides opportunities for all employees to get more involved in their local communities. Comcast’s commitment to community service has been deeply embedded in its DNA for decades. Since 2001, more than one million Comcast employees, family members, and friends across 23 countries have completed over seven million hours of service at 12,000 project sites. Team UP aligns with Project UP – a comprehensive $1 billion initiative to advance digital equity nationwide and help build a future of unlimited possibilities. As a part of Project UP, Comcast has launched more than 90 Lift Zones in Washington state to assist families with limited or no internet connection in their homes. Lift Zones provide free, robust WiFi hotspots in safe spaces designed to help students and families get online, participate in distance learning, do homework, search for jobs, and access healthcare information and public assistance. Project UP also includes Internet Essentials, the nation’s largest and most comprehensive broadband adoption program. For the past 10 years, Comcast’s Internet Essentials program has connected more people to the Internet and the technology they need to participate and excel in an increasingly digital world. Internet Essentials provides affordable home Internet for qualifying households ($9.95/mo. for up to 50 Mbps, or $29.95/mo. for up to 100 Mbps) — as well as low-cost computers, free WiFi hotspots, and free Internet training. Comcast is also proud to participate in the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provides eligible households a credit of up to $30/mo. towards Internet and mobile services. For more information, visit https://www.xfinity.com/learn/internet-service/acp. About El Centro de la Raza As an organization grounded in the Latino/a community of Washington State, it is the mission of El Centro de la Raza (The Center for People of All Races) to build the Beloved Community through unifying all racial and economic sectors; to organize, empower, and defend the basic human rights of our most vulnerable and marginalized populations; and to bring critical consciousness, justice, dignity, and equity to all the peoples of the world. The organization is 50 years old. El Centro de la Raza provides 43 programs and services to children, youth, families, and seniors in the community. Learn more at www.elcentrodelaraza.org.