As part of our series to highlight Alexandria City High School’s community partners, we turn our February spotlight on our partnership with Amazon. Since the announcement in 2018 that its HQ2 would be built in Northern Virginia, Amazon has strived to be a good corporate steward for the communities where its employees live and work.
“It is part of Amazon culture to ensure that we support our employees, customers and community members; that’s ingrained in our leadership principles,” said Amazon Head of Partnerships, Right Now Needs Andrea Muscadin. She added that part of the criteria Amazon has for engaging in partnerships is to “focus on the underserved and underrepresented communities.”
For the 2021-22 school year, Amazon renewed its commitment to its Right Now Needs Fund in Northern Virginia, with a donation of more than $400,000 to benefit students in Alexandria. These funds were in addition to a comparable contribution Amazon made to ACPS in 2020. Distributed through ACPS’ partner Communities In Schools of Northern Virginia, the funds have provided students with immediate access to urgently needed items including food, clothing and school supplies across our 18 schools. Also, just last month, Amazon provided 25,000 KN95 masks, 20,000 disposable face masks and 8,000 containers of hand sanitizer for ACPS students and staff in our schools.
Amazon helped ACPS students in need during the 2020-21 school year as well. To help ensure student connectivity amid the pandemic, Amazon donated 300 Kajeet SmartSpot devices in September 2020 so students could have mobile hotspots that provided a safe, simple wireless connection to the internet from their homes. In December 2020, as virtual learning continued, Amazon contributed $150,000 to help address the child care/school day care needs of the most vulnerable families in ACPS so their students could focus on virtual learning while their families returned to work.
“Our partnership with Amazon is a wonderful example of how we can collaborate to provide high-impact support that meets the needs of our students, staff and families,” said ACPS Executive Director of Community Partnerships and Engagement Kurt Huffman. He said his office continues to focus on building broad-based, innovative partnerships that strengthen teaching and learning for all ACPS students.
In a statement from 2020 about the Right Now Needs Fund in Northern Virginia, Senior Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs, Jay Carney said: “At Amazon, we are always looking for innovative solutions to tough challenges, and we are confident that the flexibility and speed built into our new Right Now Needs Fund will help ensure that more students from underserved communities can focus on their studies, and not fall behind as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.”
Amazon continually looks for innovative ways to assist its partners. In 2019, for example, the company awarded FIRST® robotics program registrations plus $10,000 each to six ACPS schools to expand access to computer science education. Also, last year, Amazon donated nearly 7,000 books so ACPS students could keep reading and learning during the school break.
Muscadin also spoke to the value of Amazon’s virtual Fulfillment Center Tours, which show students how computer science, state-of-the-art engineering and trained staff deliver customer orders. Another Amazon student program is aligned with a planned NASA mission this spring; Alexa for Astronauts allows students to become virtual crew members as Alexa lifts off to the moon on NASA’s Artemis I. Muscadin sees these virtual offerings as among “Amazon’s innovative ways to broaden students’ horizons and aspire to new possibilities of what is out there for them.”
She adds that if these programs help build a more diverse and equitable pipeline of employee candidates for all companies, then, it is a win for all. “We want to take this lens of innovation and unblock challenges students may face as we work together with our community partners,” said Muscadin.
“Amazon’s partnership with ACPS has been a lifeline for our families hit hardest by the pandemic. Its contributions continue to enrich the educational experiences of our students,” said Superintendent Dr. Gregory C. Hutchings, Jr. “Amazon exemplifies corporate social responsibility at its best.”
In selecting its partners, Amazon says its mindset is on seeking the most impact through collaboration. And, “we want to make sure there is equity…directing resources to those who really need it most,” added Muscadin who looks forward to developing additional opportunities for Amazon to support ACPS.
Huffman adds, “ACPS looks forward to strengthening our partnership with Amazon and continuing to be creative in how we support student, staff and family needs.”