As of last summer, Eastern Propane & Oil officially moved an office into Maine. Springvale, to be exact, and they brought their good deeds with them. If you follow Eastern Propane & Oil on social media, then you know how active they are. They are out and about attending events and serving the community at large and they’re having a great time doing it.
Nestled comfortably (and proudly) in Springvale’s favorite pizza shop’s former building, Eastern’s new branch has already become great neighbors to their community.
After following Eastern on social media, MEMA decided to take a little visit to the Springvale office and talk to some of the staff about their community involvement. “Since 1932, Eastern Propane and Oil has been committed to giving back to the communities we serve” explains Josh Anderson, VP of Marketing & Business Development at Eastern Propane & Oil. “We are proud of the team at Eastern for supporting their local communities while also continuing the Eastern mission of being reliable, responsive, safe, and convenient for all of our customers.”
As an example of giving back to their community, Customer Service Rep Cathy Follen tells us about a project she headed at Another Chance Rescue. According to Cathy, Another Chance Rescue works with the humane society and takes in cats that are abandoned and helps them find homes—a bigger problem in Maine than you might realize. According to a 2018 study released by the Maine State Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, the amount of stray and abandoned cats is well over 15,000 per year.
With the company backing her up, Cathy and her co-workers worked to collect donations. The donations consisted of food, toys, kitty litter, and more. Helping an animal find a home is special, and as a non-profit, Another Chance Rescue needs all the help they can get, Cathy explains. “It’s nice to work for a company that cares so much about their community. Eastern is good.”
Every year around the holidays, Eastern Propane & Oil runs a fun internal campaign called “The Twelve Days of Giving.” The employees are the ones fueling this campaign and nominate a customer they have come to know and want to do something special for. For each of the twelve days leading up to December 25th, a nominated customer gets a nice holiday themed gift. One of these gifts happened to be 100 gallons of heating oil, explains Customer Service Rep Cheryl Seavy. “You can nominate anyone for the gift,” she says. “There was this elderly gentleman who came in. He was a little confused and asking about fuel assistance. He was a retired vet too. My father was 23 years navy, so it was kind of close to me. I nominated him.”
When the driver went to deliver the oil, they discovered that there was a problem with his tank and the oil could not be delivered. So, Cheryl took this gift one step further and got together with Community Action to get the tank fixed and the delivery completed. She said it felt really good being able to give back to him with the support of the company.
While we were there, it seemed like everyone at the Springvale office had a story to tell. Like Amy Goodwin who created an advent calendar during the month of November to take donations for the food pantry as a Thanksgiving donation. According to Amy, “By the week of Thanksgiving they had a lot of food, not just for Thanksgiving, but for every day too. I am so proud to be a part of this team.”
Eastern likes to give back to the community and they like to be a part of the community. It’s not just about the company serving the community, with them it’s about people serving people and that’s what makes them so unique. It’s also what makes what they do so special. We definitely love their feel-good image and can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2020.
