Thank you to SurveyMonkey for supporting the Soroptimist Live Your Dream Awards year after year! Since 2017, as part of the tech company’s commitment to social impact—supported by the SurveyMonkey Canada Headquarters—has empowered the dreams of local women in Ottawa, Canada, and surrounding areas by providing cash grants to help them pursue their education goals and create better lives for their families.
Many of the award recipients are survivors of domestic violence, trafficking or sexual assault or have overcome enormous obstacles including poverty, teen pregnancy, and drug or alcohol addiction. What makes the Live Your Dream Awards unique is that women who serve as their family’s primary wage-earner can use the award to offset any costs associated with their efforts to attain higher education and training, such as books, childcare, tuition and transportation.
One of SurveyMonkey’s recent recipients is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in nursing. With this award she can focus more on school and taking care of her young daughter, instead of working extra hours at her job to make ends meet. She said: “Receiving this award is such a huge stress relief as after so many extra years of school, the debt has really built up, and money stress is definitely really hard. I really want to set up my daughter and myself for a successful life.”
Another recipient plans to replace her car so that she can get her son to daycare and herself to school without having to rely on public transportation. She is working toward a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
Get to know SurveyMonkey and why they support the Live Your Dream Awards.
We asked SurveyMonkey’s Nichole Vine, Manager, Market Research Customer Operations:
Who is SurveyMonkey and what do you strive to do?
SurveyMonkey weaves together the best of humanity, AI, machine learning, and billions of questions and real responses—for a unique approach that quickly drives better, more confident decision-making. We strive to combine people-centric solutions with an agile, AI-powered platform to give business leaders the power to shape what’s next. In other words, we aim to provide tools to help our customers ask, listen, and act on feedback at all levels!
What attracted SurveyMonkey to Soroptimist?
SurveyMonkey started working with Soroptimist International of the Americas, Inc., in 2017 when Soroptimist was looking for an application management platform to manage their Live Your Dream Awards. After some conversation, Soroptimist selected SurveyMonkey Apply as their tool of choice. As the relationship between SurveyMonkey and Soroptimist grew, we recognized an opportunity to work together to give back to our communities while also supporting our customers! Soroptimist does incredible work for women and girls around the world, and we were excited to play a small part in that work.
What attracted SurveyMonkey to the Live Your Dream Awards program?
As the relationship between SurveyMonkey and Soroptimist continued to grow, we learned more about the Live Your Dream Awards and the purpose behind the program. Out of this understanding came a great opportunity to sponsor a Live Your Dream Award–giving back to such a meaningful organization while also helping women in our local community. Since SIA was using SurveyMonkey Apply to administer the awards, it also gave us a unique opportunity to support Soroptimist in their use of the product while also using the portal ourselves to administer our own Live Your Dream awards!
Do you have any words of encouragement for these women?
We are incredibly blessed to follow these strong and determined women on their journeys. Reading their stories and understanding what they have gone through to arrive where they are today is amazing, and deeply inspiring. To the women who continue to strive for academic excellence and success, the women whose perseverance and grit has got them to where they are today, and the women who continue to move through difficult challenges in their lives for the betterment of their families, thank you for being an inspiration to so many people around the world.