Combining efforts to go green

Each year, Beachwood (Ohio) High School Teacher Greg Perry and students in his Marketing/Junior Achievement class organize Ohio’s largest green business fair—an annual eco-friendly showcase called The Green Dream. Here, businesses and organizations highlight how people can go green by using their products and services.

As a supporter of Junior Achievement, we helped fund the 2011 Green Dream by hosting GREENLife, an eco-gala organized by the class.

Held in February 2011 at our Cleveland corporate headquarters, the gala included food stations featuring healthy eating options, a private VIP tour of Progressive’s contemporary art collection, and an eco-fashion show put on by the Virginia Marti College of Art and Design with models sporting designs made of organic materials. Sarah Backhouse, host of Discovery Network’s “Planet Green,” emceed the program.

The gala raised more than $60,000. This money helped cover the Green Dream business fair costs and, due to the gala’s overwhelming success, also supported purchasing treadmills to generate electricity for the school’s national award-winning “green classroom” model.

Through strategic school-business partnerships like this, we support causes important to us and to others in the community. Take a virtual tour of Beachwood High School’s green classroom.