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Empower Camden

  RETURN TO CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

To be a good neighbor, you must get to know your neighbor

Subaru has long been dedicated to making a positive impact on local communities. Our involvement with this special community is 30 years strong and growing through each of our community partner relationships. We have taken a very intentional approach to our involvement in Camden by working with Camden nonprofits and community organizations to understand the unique challenges and opportunities our neighbors face. This strategy has taught us to be creative in how we marry needs with our empowerment goals.

Empowering Our Camden Neighbors

Building Up Camden Families
Subaru has fostered a 20-year-plus-strong relationship with Camden County Habitat for Humanity. Since 2016, Subaru has helped build five Habitat homes in Camden and has committed to building three more through 2021.

Camden Headquarters Move Day
Subaru celebrated the move of its headquarters from Cherry Hill to Camden, New Jersey, by demonstrating the Love Promise to our new neighbors. Over the course of two days, 227 Subaru employees participated in 22 volunteer events with local Camden nonprofit partners.

The Subaru Share the Love Garden
The Subaru Share the Love Garden began in 2009. After reading an article about how farmers near our corporate headquarters in southern New Jersey were planting a row of crops to donate to those in need, we asked, “Why couldn’t we do something similar?” It started with a small garden on the grounds of our headquarters and has grown to include eight raised beds producing 600 pounds of produce annually, on average. The garden is managed and maintained by a group of dedicated employees and all of the produce is donated to a local soup kitchen to help feed our neighbors in need. Over the garden’s 10-year lifespan, we have donated about 6,500 pounds of produce.



Empowering the Power to Explore, Learn, and Earn

Girls, Inc.
Girls Inc. is a comprehensive organization focused on empowering girls ages 6-18. Their research-based programming focuses on the development of the whole girl, supporting, mentoring, and guiding girls in an affirming, pro-girl environment that currently serves more than 2,000 girls each year. Subaru is proud to have partnered with Girls Inc. to bring their critical resources to our hometown of Camden, New Jersey, for the first time.

Hopeworks
For the past 17 years, Hopeworks has trained Camden youth in technology solutions. Over the course of a long-term partnership, Subaru has worked with Hopeworks to provide mentorship and sponsorship opportunities through a collaborative IT department internship program. In addition to teaching Hopeworks students about technology and other critical job skills, select Subaru managers have been trained by Hopeworks’ Youth Healing Team on the impact of trauma on a person’s ability to succeed. Subaru will also cover the cost for any Camden-based organization to receive the same trauma training.

Cathedral Kitchen
Cathedral Kitchen’s mission is changing lives through food. They provide three main services for the Camden area: nourishment, training, and employment. Through these services, the organization feeds an average of 300-plus people per day and holds culinary and baking arts training programs, which have prepared over 365 individuals for jobs in the culinary industry to date. In addition, Cathedral Kitchen provides job opportunities for training program graduates and Camden residents through its meal preparation and delivery service with Volunteers of America, the Cathedral Kitchen Café and catering business, and the organization’s food truck. With its Subaru investment, Cathedral Kitchen was able to build a rooftop garden for its café, which helps fund about 20% of the nonprofit’s mission, and to hire a full-time nutritionist and educator. Subaru employees also volunteer monthly serving meals, some of which include vegetables that Subaru grows in its own Share the Love Garden.

Keeping Camden Green with TerraCycle

Subaru and its retailers have partnered with TerraCycle to collect millions of pieces of so-called “unrecyclable” waste. TerraCycle turns this raw material into furnishings such as picnic tables which we donate to a Camden park. Subaru also supports the development of the Zero-Landfill Ambassador Program – both in the Camden School District and across the country. This program engages kids K–12 in reducing landfill waste in their area through solutions like composting, reduction of single-use plastics through canned water, and more.