This week Equitas and the IHRTP have the great pleasure of having a small group of ‘extra’ participants on site: the AIMIA Common Good Team. Aimia and Equitas recently joined forces in a very special relationship. Fuelled by their incredible culture of Corporate Social Responsibility, Aimia has embarked upon a relationship with Equitas that involves support on many levels – financial support of the IHRTP over three years, support by way of Aeroplan Miles, and logistical support which takes so many different forms it’s hard to know where to start describing it! One of the wonderful initiatives of Aimia is The Common Good Team. This project involves a group of Aimia employees who spend a week with a non-profit organization somewhere in the world helping to make concrete change on the ground. Employees are given the week off and flown around the world to give their expertise and time to organizations they are supporting. 
The Aimia team meets with Equitas staff and IHRTP resource persons This year, the Common Good Team is spending a week at the IHRTP. Working with them for many months before the program, we jointly developed goals and projects for them to work on while they are here, all the while benefitting from the magnificent atmosphere that is the IHRTP. While here, they will be creating a plan for Equitas to expand its reach so more people know about the important work that we and our partners do. Today is just their third day and already I can see the tremendous potential of the efforts they have made…great things are waiting for us! I wrote the other day about the relationship between charities and donors. My experience has been that true ‘relationships’ sometimes bloom between organizations and individual donors. But this experience with Aimia has really blown me away. This is not some big company writing a cheque to make themselves look and feel good. This is a company with tremendously committed individuals, people committed to making their own company succeed but equally committed to sharing their success with others. They can’t seem to do enough for us – and we are so grateful. I feel that words don’t and can’t do justice to how grateful we are to Aimia and their wonderful presence in our work. They have enriched us as an organization and their very personal presence here is enriching us as individuals. On behalf of Equitas, the IHRTP participants and all our partners: THANK YOU! Ronit Yarosky, Fund Development Officer at Equitas