Adaptability is one of TR’s Operational Principles, and thankfully, our friends at Tishman Speyer are picking up what we’re throwing down in the disaster relief arena.
In the last year, we’ve hired more staff and recruited more volunteers to aid more communities affected by disasters. So in August 2013, we moved headquarters seven miles west of our humble beginnings in Inglewood, CA to the spacious digs of Tishman Speyer’s Continental Grand Plaza in El Segundo.
More than 80 volunteers were processed, administered immunizations, and fed with the extra space provided by Tishman Speyer.
While the new office suits TR employees and interns rather nicely, we couldn’t have predicted we’d be launching our largest international mission to date and deploying 86 volunteers to the Philippines. We kicked off Operation: Seabird in response to Typhoon Haiyan just before Veterans Day, and Tishman Speyer graciously accommodated our rapidly changing needs and provided us with extra breathing room so we could escalate our operation and process volunteers through HQ.
After spending nearly ten days in the Philippines, the alpha team debriefed on lessons learned upon returning to TR HQ.
Not only did the folks at Tishman Speyer donate some vacant space across the hall from TR HQ, they kept the lights on for our crew working ‘round the clock, and reserved some space in the parking lot so we could load up supplies and easily transport volunteers to and from LAX.
Volunteers coordinate medical supplies from Direct Relief to send along with teams deployed to Manila.
That elbow room, those accommodations allowed our teams on the ground to treat and vaccinate more than 2,000 patients and provide immediate relief in the typhoon-swept communities of Tacloban, Tanauan, Tolosa, and Carigara.
Volunteers completed some necessary paperwork before boarding a plane to the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan.
Thanks for playing a supporting role in Operation: Seabird, Tishman Speyer.