April 21st marks the three-year anniversary of Shelter Movers Ottawa’s (SMO) unique partnership with Lumentum. This collaboration united two actors from totally different worlds who share a common purpose: going beyond core activities to help our communities. Lumentum and SMO have helped deliver over fourteen thousand meals to women’s shelters in Ottawa, but how did this come to be?
Lumentum's start in providing meals
Lumentum’s partnership with SMO began in mid-April 2020 after Lumentum’s Ottawa office was forced to close due to the Pandemic in March 2020. Lumentum is a high-tech company based out of San Jose, California known to deliver innovative photonics to accelerate the speed and scale of cloud, networking, advanced manufacturing, and 3D sensing applications. Their Ottawa office focuses mainly on research and development. However, they also have sales, customer service, and legal departments. So how did this lead to a partnership in providing meals to women’s and children’s shelters?
When their offices closed, their on-site cafeteria had to remain open for those who still worked on-site. But with the number of on-site employees having dropped from 400-450 down to 40-50, there was a large amount of unused space. This realization led them to explore how they could use this to support the community.
Supporting women’s and children’s shelters
As a company that is driven by the ultimate goal to “illuminate the path forward to a more sustainable future”, Lumentum immediately saw an opportunity to help the local community by wisely utilizing the vacant space in their on-site cafeteria to prepare meals during the COVID shutdown. After exploring avenues of who they could support with meals they realized the pandemic led to an increased need for women’s and children’s shelters. They connected with Chrysalis, Interval, and Nelson house—partners who already work closely with SMO—and realized that there was also a need for meals. Through their discussions, they also learned of the moving services that SMO provides. From there, a partnership was formed.
The two organizations work complementary to each other, where Shelter Movers Ottawa currently serves and delivers to our community partners like Chrysalis House, Interval House, and Nelson House. Lumentum delivers meals to other shelters, along with Kemptville District Hospital for nurses in the COVID ward, Cornerstone, and Starwood.
Lumentum and SMO
Keith Aguinaga, the Senior Director of Global Customer Service in Ottawa, mentioned that this is one of the projects he’s most proud of. It has been a huge success—and Shelter Movers has been able to fill the gap for distribution.
Lumentum also contributes to shelters financially and believes, just like us, in a brighter future for our partnership. They see great opportunities for support moving forward, and SMO is grateful to have such a wonderful partner.
With three years of partnership, SMO is thankful for all we have been able to accomplish together. We are looking forward to the next chapter in our blooming partnership and everything we can do together.