Your dream job does not exist. You must create it.

“First Rate Core Values: Love, Give, Serve, and Enjoy inspired me to create my dream job.”

It can get a little overwhelming when sifting through your daily social media feeds. Thankfully though, beyond all the negative news and combative rhetoric, there are a lot of great stories out there. One of those great stories came from a friend in Denver. Her law firm had coordinated the delivery of lunches for doctors and nurses at the local hospital. After getting all of those good feels from the picture with the gracious medical staff who are selflessly serving on the frontlines of this pandemic, I wanted to do something similar.

First Rate had already taken a huge step with regards to community support by granting each employee $15/day for use at local eateries. This is something I have utilized in order to discover and support a plethora of amazing eateries in my neighborhood. An expansion of community is much more welcome than the expansion of my waistline these past few weeks. This was such a generous gift from First Rate to its employees, but why couldn’t I expand this beyond myself? I realized there was no way that I was the only one having thoughts like this at First Rate, so how could I turn my sentiment into action?

I first reached out to Alycee Evans, our amazing Corporate Operations Specialist, because she works closely with the local companies that sponsored our Wednesday lunches at the office. She informed me about the community work that Thornhill Catering was accomplishing during this crisis. After getting in touch with Thornhill, I discovered it would be a natural fit for us to partner with them on distributing meals to local organizations that were serving on the front lines to get meals to those organizations’ volunteers, staff, and clients.

Now that the infrastructure was worked out, it was time to see how many other First Raters would want to volunteer some of their food funds to a different organization each week. The response was swift and bold. Initially, Mission Arlington said they could use 30 lunches for staff members and volunteers. We were able to pool together over $500 which not only covered 30 lunches but also allowed us to make a sizable donation to Thornhill’s 1000 Free Meals a Month program for families in need. This upcoming week, we are partnering with Arlington Life Shelter to deliver 65 meals. It is an honor and privilege to serve our community. We now would like to open it up to our First Rate extended family as we know many of you are looking for ways to give during this time and perhaps aren’t quite sure what avenues are safe and impactful. Please contact me at [email protected] if you are interested in joining our efforts and building a lasting impact on our community.