Charity and giving back to the community

Having just read Rick's post on the CanITPro blog (Connecting with the Community in a new way - Habitat for Humanity build) it seems like this was the week and weekend that everyone decided to use their volunteer hours to give back to the community.  As Rick mentions in his post, every Microsoft Employee is encouraged to take some time and give back to the community, in fact, we are give 40 hours a year to do so. 

For my part I donate my time to the Weekend to End Breast Cancer (https://www.endcancer.ca) events and have recently finished working on the Ottawa event (I did Winnipeg earlier this year, and will do Toronto in September).  As a side note, Microsoft Canada has a team (Spirit and Sole) walking in the Toronto event and they have already raised over $40,000 towards Breast Cancer research.

As you look back through some of the posts here, you will see that we have some pretty enthusiastic participants that willingly give their time to help others.  Graham talks about this in his "Is it all in the Genes?" post.

So as an IT Manager, do you encourage your employees to give back to the community?  What programs do you have in place to encourage this type of behavior?  Leave us a comment and let us know what your company is doing.