Journeys had one awesome year, which means we were more motivated than ever to give back to causes close to our hearts!
The Community Outreach team and employee volunteers rolled up their pant legs, laced their sneaks (from Journeys, of course), and got to work! Between building bikes and skateboards for underserved youth across the globe, to community park clean-ups in several states, and serving food to kids in the Nashville area, it’s been one fulfilling year!
We started off on a high note with the 2022 Journeys Sales Meeting. More than 600 managers from the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico partnered with our nonprofit friends, Can’d Aid, to build 1,200 bikes. The bikes, built with love, were packaged up and sent to first graders in the Nashville community. Next, we took our mission with Can’d Aid on the road to Canada for the first-ever international ATC activation! More than 50 Little Burgundy and Journeys Canada managers came together in Toronto to build bikes for kids in their area. There’s nothing quite like a smile on a kid’s face when they see their first bike, we practically squeal every time we get to be a part of it!
After Canada, we weren’t quite finished road-tripping, in fact, we were just getting started. We took off to the Midwest for a few regional activations in St. Louis, MO, and Cincinnati, OH. A combined 40 Journeys store managers helped clean up local parks, pick up trash and microplastics, do some light landscaping, and finish anything else that needed to be done. With help from Can’d Aid, we were able to give children in those cities a new and improved and, most importantly, clean place to play and grow!
We also even made a few stops on the Sad Summer Festival Presented by Journeys tour! We did a private Q&A event with the band Waterparks and sponsored an interactive mural. In the end, we donated instruments and the mural to the Boys and Girls Club.
In Nashville, our Home Office put in work too! Volunteering with organizations like Rocketown, Youth Villages, Nashville Pride, and several others, over 50 employees donated their time, made dinners, and offered mentorship and more of their skills to the community throughout 2022.
We rounded out this spectacular year with market meetings, where districts met to learn, grow, and improve! In their downtime, each district assembled a skateboard with the special Journeys touch. The boards were then donated to kids in their local communities. When all was said and done, these awesome employees donated almost 1,500 boards in just one month!
As you can see, this year was like our very own little, tiny miracle. It’s always our number one mission to be there for teens and young kids. We like to focus on being the one-stop for fashion, social media content, and live events like concerts, festivals, and meet and greets, but we also like to support them in other ways. ATC is our way of giving back and doing what we can to support the teenage community that we love so much!
Thank you again to the 2,345 volunteers who helped us clock our total 7,492 volunteer hours along the way! We can’t do it without each one of you! Stay tuned to see how you can get involved with Journeys ATC or our nonprofit partners in the future.
