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State Farm supports the neighborhoods it serves and where our associates call home. Helping to building safer, stronger, and better educated communities.”

Corporations have a responsibility because where are they going to get their workers, and how can they impact the society that they’re trying to serve? They have to be part of that, and State Farm really embodies that.

Anybody can spend money on an issue. What we have tried to do is, how do you use available resources – be it money, be it people – in driving fundamental change.

…We have agents and employees across the U.S. and Canada, in cities and in small towns. The passion that they display towards getting involved in their communities is incredible…but I know that it’s in our DNA. It’s our culture at State Farm.

State Farm was founded on the belief that helping others is the right thing to do. Annually, the company contributes up to $60 million to the communities it serves. That funding, plus the thousands of employee volunteer hours logged each year, support the company’s mission to build safer, stronger, and better- educated communities.

State Farm has been a safety advocate for decades, decades, decades.

State Farm was instrumental in forming Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and also we’ve worked on things like drunk driving, and seat belts and rollover protection and booster seats and intersection safety…you name it…I can’t think of a time when State Farm has not been at our side helping us and supporting us and being out in the trenches, working on these issues.

People might not realize it today, but…there was a controversial regulation that was due to take effect in 1981 that would have required airbags in cars. But it was cancelled by the government – it was part of a de-regulation effort. Why we have airbags in cars today is because State Farm Insurance decided to sue the government for canceling that regulation.

There’s no question that the air bag rule has saved tens of thousands of lives. In fact, the Dept. of Transportation estimates it’s about 3,000 lives a year. And that’s just huge.

In the late 90s, State Farm joined forces with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to reduce deaths and injuries to children in car crashes. The two created the nation’s largest study on the subject. Then they put their findings into action, dramatically changing our attitude toward car and booster seats.

Because of State Farm’s size and scope, our research right from day one was able to reach into all the communities of the United States.

And I’m thrilled and very proud to say that over the course of the program, over 2,500 hundred lives were saved.

I like to think of that as like 100 elementary school classrooms of children have been saved since the program began.

Today, State Farm and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia are focusing attention on teen driver safety. The partnership has brought much needed focus to the dangers of distracted driving. It’s also making strong Graduated Driver Licensing laws a reality in many states.

State Farm also supports ways to create more durable, sustainable communities. For decades, the company has conducted its own research on building products with the goal of helping customers reduce or eliminate a loss.

One of the things I’ve learned about State Farm in more than the eleven years that we’ve worked together is if State Farm embraces an issue, they embrace it 360 degrees.

I like that State Farm practices what they preach. They talk about mitigation, loss prevention, loss control, and they also practice it.

That’s why State Farm was first in line to support a $40 million research facility that will simulate hurricane force winds, hail storms and wildfires to test the resilience of building products.

State Farm’s community development efforts are focused on building safer, stronger, better-educated communities. The company has long supported Habitat for Humanity in its mission to eliminate poverty housing. State Farm also sponsors Habitat’s Youth programs.

The highlight of our partnership with State Farm has been having your teams come out and build with our young people. We see the excitement and the sense of ownership and pride of team members who been out on the build sites across the country.

In my experience, State Farm people are people who really care about making their community better.

State Farm has been a leading voice in the call for a better education system. Today, it is the lead sponsor of Americas Promise Alliance which seeks to cut the dropout rate in half through the delivery of five fundamental promises.

In 2010, State Farm sponsored over 100 dropout prevention summits across the country to develop workable solutions to the country’s drop out crisis.

They are in the communities, on the ground, making things happen and being invested in the problems that exist there.

Without State Farm, we would not be able to do this…

Service learning is the teaching strategy that connects what students learn in the classroom to applications in the real world. State Farm is recognized as a corporate leader of this hands-on approach to learning and civic responsibility.

We’re finding through the research that young people who come out of good service learning experience in their elementary or secondary schools, go onto college to do the same kind of work, and then they go on to be community leaders.

You get the synergy of helping the communities and the good feeling to the kids of what it means to be a member of that community…to feel an obligation to contribute and to know at a young age that they individually can make a difference. That’s incredibly powerful.