Harmony Employees Give Back

Harmony Employees Give Back

Christmas is truly the “Season of Giving.” Harmony Enterprises’ employees have always had long standing tradition of giving back to their career, community, culture, and company. This is especially true this holiday season.  Here are just a few example of how Harmony employees give back.

Fighting Cancer, Lefse Style!

Office Manager, Lana Soppa, has been a member of the Fillmore County Relay for Life for many years. She has spearheaded many fundraisers within Harmony Enterprises and our community to help with the fight against cancer. One thing that she has done annually is make homemade lefse to sell, donating the proceeds to our local chapter of Relay for Life for the past five years.

Lana is of Norwegian heritage, but is self-taught on how to make her Christmas goodies. She watched her grandmother, great aunt, and mother make it over the years and wanted to teach herself to carry on the family tradition. She has been making it herself now for 35 years!

What is lefse?  Lefse is a traditional soft Norwegian flatbread, often made in a round shape, similar to a flour tortilla. It is made with flour, can include riced potatoes, and includes butter, and milk, cream, or lard. It can be eaten cold, heated up, and is delicious with honey, butter, sugar, and cinnamon! Legends date it back to the time of the Vikings, but history shows potatoes first appeared in Norway during the 18th century. In those days, enough lefse would be made by a family at one time to last for up to a year.

Leveraging the help of her husband, Glenn, Lana peeled, rolled, riced, and baked nearly 100 pounds of potatoes for this year’s hoard! Employees were able to sign up to purchase freezable “rounds” to serve during the holidays.

With her continued hard work, Lana was able to donate over $1000 toward Relay for Life this year. To date, her lefse fundraiser has earned close to $4000. Proof that one person CAN make a difference.

Fight Hunger? Yes, We CAN!

To give back during the holidays, Harmony Employees were involved with a “CANSTRUCTION” contest this past Thursday. Harmony’s “CANSTRUCTION” was a fun competition to donate canned goods to the local food shelf.

Participating employees were divided up into their safety groups and were encouraged to hold pre-event meetings to come up with creative building plans.

The idea is simple, each participating employee must bring in at lease three canned goods for donation to use in their “build”.

The more cans of various sizes and shapes they could bring in, the more interesting and intricate their designs could be!

 

Teams were given a designated amount of time and specific rules on how they could work together to stack, bind, and manufacture their “canstructs.”

Each final design was judged by impartial local community members.  They were judged on creativity, use of space, use of color, the use of cans in the structure, and overall appeal. The winning team earned a pizza lunch party for their best-in-show design. This year’s winning team was Team #2 with the theme of “Do U Wanna Build A Snowman?”.

The project was a great way for Harmony Employees to give back, while allowing them to work together toward a common goal with employees they might not normally get the chance to work with on a daily basis.

Not only did Harmony Enterprises employees get involved, employees and parents at Harmony Kids Learning Center stepped up big to donate can goods to the event.

Collections took place the week before and parents were able to donate in crates underneath a tree in the daycare’s entry way.  Thank you, parents!

Harmony Enterprises is proud to announce that through this “CANSTRUCTION” fundraiser, we were able to donate a full truckload of canned food and boxes of dry goods of food!

Years of Service Recognition

Another way that Harmony employees give back is through their commitment and dedication to their career and company.

This month, Harmony Enterprises was proud to recognize several employees who reached service milestones during the 2021 calendar year. Employees are recognized the following year at the annual holiday luncheon. This year’s honorees include:

Geoff Langreck, Welder, 3 years

Nathan Magnuson, Welder, 3 years

Lefty Wright, Field Service Technician, 3 years

Stephanie Heibel, HR Administrator, 3 years

Rob Crawford, Welder, 5 years

Lane Powell, New Business Development Manager, 5 years

Ben Blaess, Shipping, 10 years

Jason Magnuson, Paint Booth/Panel Build, 15 years

Jen Fye, Production Control, 25 years

Rollie Johnson, Shipping, 45 years

Thank you to these, and all of our employees for the courage to make a difference in our career, culture, community, and company. We appreciate your hard work, positivity, and dedication to helping us provide the widest range of quality waste and recycling solutions available on the market.

Give Back This Year!

How is your company “giving back” this year? Consider having employee fundraising events for local charities or getting involved in things like Adopt-A-Highway, or any of the many opportunities out there to make your community and our world a better place for generations to come. If you are interested in learning about how your company can  give back to our environment by practicing sustainability through recycling and waste reduction, we’re here to help.  Call us at (507) 886-6666 or Contact Us today!