Dallas Givecamp is proud to have supportive sponsors who help make the weekend possible with their generous donations of time, money, technical support, and product availability.  One of our sponsors was wanted the developers and volunteers to know how much she and her company appreciate what they are doing and wrote the letter below.

“Eleven years ago, when I was a sophomore in high school I started a charity group called “Give Back” in my small New England hometown. The purpose of the group was purely to give back to our community in any creative way we could think of. It started out as 7 of us friends. Our charities included long nights of shaping and baking apple pies in a preschool cafeteria for Thanksgiving day, putting on puppet shows at the local children’s hospital and donating magazines or books to shelters.

As teenagers we were very generous with our already packed schedules, but I was never so proud of my peers when the third year we called for volunteers, we had to create an application process because of the hundreds of high school kids who came out to join Give Back. To my knowledge, this group is still active today in my town youth center. For me this was just the beginning of my career making small contributions to society.

There are millions of charities in our ever needy world and it could be a full time job to contribute to all of the causes. In fact, it is a full time job – try mine! As the Community Program Manager for Telerik, each and every community event or give camp we sponsor pulls at my heart strings, just like those kids in the hospital. There is something bigger at play when a group of well-intentioned people get together to educate each other and help others who may not have the necessary resources available to them to make a difference.  

I am so very honored to be part of the developer community. As you can see, by being more than just a program or event manager, I am able to contribute indirectly to the betterment of these charities and that is exactly why we keep going. It’s not always sunshine and happiness making it happen; it can be late nights and disgruntled developers rebooting and arguing about the best developer practices. I am lucky enough to stay out of that part and get paid to work for a company that will dish out the cash to help the Give Camps. The real deserving people are those who spend their personal and free time (what’s that?) helping others with their coding talents.

So before you thank the sponsors for food or drink, be sure to pat yourself on the back for playing such a pivotal role in it all.

We, at Telerik, are rooting for your continued involvement!”

Emily Parker :::

Community Program Manager