With employees' help, Vivint sends thousands of meals to Haiti

Vivint, one of Provo's local companies and a home technology giant, is pushing community initiatives and getting them done. What many might not realize beyond the orange logo, home security and summer sales jobs, is that the company is involved in a significant amount of service and monetary donations in both local and global communities.
Take last week as a major example. More than 700 employees took time during two and half work days to assemble meals for orphaned children in Haiti. The international project wasn't random either -- it aligns with Vivint's goal for the next several years to reach out to special needs children both in Utah County and abroad -- as it takes on a humanitarian area it feels needs stronger support.
"For the next five years, we will be focusing on kids who have an intellectual disability," said Holly Mero-Bench, Director of Vivint Gives Back. "We're evolving as a company and foundation. We looked at different causes and thought 'Where can we put resources, time and effort?' The cause we arrived at was children with intellectual disabilities. All of the projects that we do this year and moving forward will be centered around intellectual disabilities."
In less than three days, Vivint employees and their families managed to assemble a staggering 217,000 meal kits which will provide 595 kids in Haiti with daily meals for a year. The orphanage in Haiti specifically takes in and cares for special needs children. Not only did employees take time from their days to volunteer, but they raised and donated the $47,000 themselves required to purchase the necessary food supplies.
Vivint partnered with the Feed My Starving Children, a non-profit organization that has provided more than 600 million packaged meals to malnourished children across the world, for a fourth consecutive year. Vivint worked with the organization to pick a situation that met the initiatives and goals set to aid children with intellectual disabilities.
"Because of our previous partnership, we talked about the best location with kids that have those special needs," Mero-Bench said. "The center in Haiti takes in those kids."
Out of more than 70 countries in the world the non-profit aids, the needs in Haiti top the board. To date, FMSC has shipped more than 244,000,000 meals to Haiti with the help of companies like Vivint. To put the magnitude of the number of meals prepared via Vivint in the last four years with FMSC into perspective, the meals for the 2,000-plus children that have received the food could provide sustenance here to four to five elementary schools for an entire year.
According to FMSC, the meals packaged by volunteers are made of a rice or potato base and are designed for malnourished children in order to improve health, growth and physical well-being.
The meals from Vivint are being shipped to the Northwest Haiti Christian Mission by boat and will arrive within the next two months.
Daily Herald Community & Business Editor Jordan Carroll can be reached at jcarroll@heraldextra.com or on Twitter @jordanec.