by Tom Bené
“You never know how much joy a simple smile can bring.”
I learned this concept at a very early age and I’ve seen it proved true throughout my life. Whether people are celebrating success or dealing with life’s inevitable challenges, everything goes better with a smile – including the smile that comes from an ice cold Pepsi or one of Dairy Queen’s beloved Dilly Bar ice cream treats.
I had the opportunity to see this firsthand when Dairy Queen President and CEO John Gainor and PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi handed out free Dilly Bars to our associates in Purchase last week. The pictures you see below cannot do justice to what I saw in person; as our talented associates took a break from their workdays to enjoy Dilly Bars, I could see some of them become like children again . . . and smile.
Why all the smiles? For one thing, if you’ve never had a Dilly Bar, go get one now because they’re delicious! For another thing, our associates smiled that day because they knew that by enjoying a treat and making a contribution they were helping to raise some much-needed funds for the Children’s Miracle Network, an organization that both PepsiCo and Dairy Queen, a tremendous PepsiCo partner, support.
In addition, through our partnership with Marriott, between May 18 and September 7, participating Marriott Hotel properties are donating a portion of the proceeds from sales of any 20-ounce or one-liter bottle of Lipton or Aquafina beverages to Children’s Miracle Network hospitals.
My colleagues and I all deeply admire the work Children’s Miracle Network does to help kids at more than 170 hospitals throughout North America. To put this work in perspective, these hospitals provide approximately $2.5 billion per year of charity care to families in need.
If you go to the Children’s Miracle Network website, you can learn about Bay, a happy, well-rounded boy who is a good student, enjoys baseball and plays violin in his orchestra while being treated for Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome at St. Francis Health Center in Topeka, KS. Or, you can learn about Olivia, a bright-eyed and spirited girl who, despite being born with multiple organ defects, undergoing three surgeries, and getting ongoing cardiac treatment at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, CT, loves hip-hop, playing piano, singing in choir and acting in her school’s drama club. And you can learn about many other children who continue to smile while overcoming truly challenging obstacles.
Which brings me back to what many of us learned long ago: Our associates may never know how much joy last week’s simple smiles will bring to kids like Bay and Olivia. But Bay and Olivia will. And so will thousands of kids just like them. That reality – that you can do well and do good at the same time – is what Performance with Purpose is all about.
