An increasing number of companies are promoting social responsibility in the form of volunteering in their local communities. One of the Big Four accounting firms is giving high school accounting students a chance to help the United Way with what they learned in class.
Deloitte puts on a Virtual Team Challenge in a game called Spill, which requires students to work collaboratively over several weeks to figure out how to clean up an oil spill outside of a virtual town called New City. They attend online meetings to interview vendors and negotiate the best prices to resolve the ecological disaster using business skills they learned in class and each student fills one of several roles on a stimulated professional services team.
Members of the winning team from Amherst Regional High School in Massachusetts which earned $233,240 in virtual money for the cleanup, each received a reward of $300 in real-world money, as did the school, and Deloitte contributed $1,000 to the United Way on behalf of the school.
More information about the game can be found at
