Waterloo East High and SERVPRO Recognized at State Level Character Counts

posted on Tuesday, June 23, 2020 in Investor Highlights

Special congrats to Waterloo East High JROTC and SERVPRO of Black Hawk County for being recognized by the Robert D. and Billie Ray Center (formerly Character Counts of Iowa) for their commitment to the Character Counts Six Pillars of Character. 

Article from the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier

Receiving the state’s Student Organization of Character is Waterloo’s East High School JROTC program. Servpro of Black Hawk County received the Business of Character honorable mention honor.

Both programs also were recognized by the local Cedar Valley Character Counts Committee.

East High JROTC is a leadership development program that is meant to inspire young people to be better citizens. Since August 2017, it has completed over 3,800 volunteer hours within the community. It hosts two blood drives annually. Cadets volunteer an average of 30 hours monthly at the Waterloo American Legion Post providing meals and helping veterans. For three years, it has provided volunteers for the Feed My Starving Children program. It averages 20 color guards per year, including for Honor Flights, Grout Museum, Relay for Life, and many more. Each Memorial Day, they place over 5,000 flags on veteran headstones at Garden of Memories and Fairview Cemeteries.

Servpro is a fire and water cleanup and restoration franchise. Recipients of their services have said the company’s employees have “showed compassion”, “(Gave me) peace of mind from the initial panic…”, were “extremely empathetic and helpful coordinating services beyond their company scope”, and “the team was very respectful of our on-going operations and did their best to cause the least amount of disruption…”. However, nominator Sandi Sommerfelt said Servpro doesn’t only impact the lives of customers, but the lives of its employees as well.

“Intentional hiring to develop trained staff in all services has built a trustworthy team,” she said. “Investment in people is the emphasis. (Owner) Scott (Demuth) genuinely develops a connection with each employee…During the flooding of neighboring counties, Scott has volunteered along with his own crew to tackle mounting service requests.”

Due to the Coronavirus, both the Cedar Valley Character Counts and Robert D. Ray events have been canceled or postponed.

The Six Pillars are Trustworthy, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship.