Shared Journey With The Community

Empathy lies at the core of Cloudways’ guiding principles. That’s where our commitment to ‘peace of mind’, one of our central business values, comes from. That’s why we feel a responsibility to help improve the quality of life for our employees and their families and of society and communities at large.

Leading Compassion-First

We choose to fulfil this responsibility through a number of avenues.

For instance, as a bootstrapped organization ourselves, we’re able to understand the challenges and hardships of businesses starting from the ground up. That’s why we’ve helped helped build up entrepreneurs and startups in different communities.

Additionally, we offer non-profit organizations discounted prices given the important role they play in the community!

When COVID-19 rolled around, we were quick to prioritize the health of our employees by promptly adopting and facilitating remote work. We also understood how isolation could take its toll on mental health on a global scale, and so worked on offsetting this through mental health webinars with Big Orange Heart.

Plus, as we realized the pandemic would destabilize businesses worldwide, we started a COVID-19 fund for customers that had taken a financial hit, to help alleviate their stress. And we offered tools in collaboration with our partners to help streamline operations for businesses hit hard by COVID-19, as they adapted to the new normal.

As our company grows, so does the scope of our role in helping bring about a larger change for the wider community. We realize we must do more to have a larger impact on the world. And to start with we committed ourselves to take up an environmental sustainability initiative. In 2021, we recognized this as one of the biggest needs of the hour.

Why We Committed To Environmental Sustainability

At Cloudways, we believe organizations play a critical role in helping the communities they serve and the world at large. That’s why we resolved to take up an environmental sustainability initiative. In 2021, it’s one of the biggest needs of the hour.

Working on an environmental sustainability initiative made sense on multiple levels:

• Environmental sustainability connects with our values more than any other single cause. We believe in taking innovative action using data-driven ideology to win as a team. The numbers are in on climate change and the role deforestation plays in this, and it’s important to us that we use our resources to battle it together.
• It allows us to affect multiple areas of impact with one powerful action. Deforestation in any corner of the world has far-reaching consequences; without trees, there’s nothing to reabsorb increasing levels of carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change. Replanting lost trees that can capture carbon dioxide back from the atmosphere is one of the best ways to respond to this challenge.
• Climate change is a core issue that affects the entire world. It is not a problem that’s going away any time soon. It’s up to us as global citizens to understand how we’re affecting the planet and take steps to mitigate the damage. To ensure peace of mind for future generations.

Partnering with One Tree Planted

Once we had a clear objective in mind – environmental sustainability – we moved to making a plan of action

This had to be the fastest our leadership ever approved of a plan! Social Media Lead Shams Uddin Abro was helped by Assistant Manager Marketing Sajjad Shahid to come up with a small social campaign, which went on to evolve into a company-wide sustainability initiative.

At first, the two threw around a bunch of different ideas for the campaign. They landed on the sustainability initiative once they decided what the right goals for the initiative would be: 1. create meaningful impact, 2. make employees proud and 3. inform customers that they are contributing to a greener world.

All we needed was the right partner to translate our goals into action. Enter One Tree Planted.

One Tree Planted is a non-profit that plants trees in countries all around the world. One tree costs one dollar to plant. OTP bases its policy on what it identifies as the six “pillars” of a sustainable planet environment.

Air: Trees help to clean the air we breathe. They absorb carbon dioxide and harmful pollutants, sweep up dust particles and irritants, and release fresh oxygen. A mature tree can absorb 48 pounds of CO2 per year.

Water: Trees help capture rainwater, and reduce the risk of natural disasters like floods and landslides. In the Amazon, more than 50% of water in the ecosystem is contained within plants.

Biodiversity: A single tree can be home to hundreds of species of insect, fungi, moss, mammals, and plants. In fact, 80% of the world’s terrestrial plants and animals live in forests, and are losing their homes to deforestation.

Social Impact: Sustainable tree farming provides timber to build homes and shelters, and wood to burn for cooking and heating. 1.6 billion people worldwide rely on forests for their livelihood.

Health: More than 120 natural remedies found in the rainforest can be used as medicines.

Climate: Trees help cool the planet by sucking in and storing harmful greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into their trunks, branches, and leaves — and releasing oxygen back into the atmosphere. A mature tree actually sequesters a whopping 48 pounds of CO2 every year!

These six pillars really resonated with us and our goals for the sustainability initiative. Those shared beliefs and values made it the perfect team-up!

How We’re Helping One Tree Planted Reach its Ambitious Goal

OTP’s Million Tree Challenge involves 100 companies pledging to plant 10,000 trees each. The Million Tree Challenge is devoted to helping Californian forests recover from the record-breaking wildfires that destroyed hundreds of thousands of trees

We partnered with OTP on the Million Tree Challenge during Earth Month to help spread awareness and create a positive impact on the environment. As part of the campaign, we committed to planting 10,000 trees in California.

We also created a social media campaign to educate our followers on the impacts of deforestation and the necessity of trees for our future. For this, we curated a series of videos from OTP’s vast library of amazing video content. On Earth Day, we announced our partnership with OTP, and explained the inspirational Million Tree Challenge to our followers, hoping to move them to support green causes as well.

Sharing Our Commitment to Environmental Sustainability with Our Employees

To spread awareness throughout our organization and to cement a shared commitment towards sustainability, we celebrated Earth Day with our global employees by sending everyone an indoor plant as a symbol of our shared responsibility.

This was easier said than done! Arranging for deliveries across Europe, Britain, North America, South America, Africa and Asia was never going to be a picnic. With COVID-19 added to the mix, procuring and delivering the plants got to be a real logistical trial.

But we were determined to rise to the challenge!

First we identified what kinds of indoor plants were low-maintenance enough to be difficult for anyone to kill off, and which had proven health benefits and were safe for pets and children to be around. It took time to research, but we’re happy with the results.

As for timely delivery to every employee during the pandemic and various lockdowns, well, some locations were more challenging to deliver to. But we were able to accomplish almost every delivery during April for Earth Month like we had initially planned.

Here are some pictures of the Cloudways family showing their pride in the company and commitment towards sustainability on social media!

1. Plantation
2. Plants
3. Volunteer
4. Desktop
5. Workstation

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