The American Red Cross, which held its annual Real Heroes Breakfast on Thursday, honored Freeport’s L.L. Bean and Becky Shepherd from Wild Oats Bakery in Brunswick at the Italian Heritage Center in Portland.
Shepherd was presented with the Community Service Award for her work with at risk and disadvantaged youth.
“With a focus on environmental and social responsibility and a desire to provide clean, all-natural and from scratch products, Becky has been committed to the development of her staff, community and educational system,” part of her nomination read.
Shepherd said she brings the high school-aged teens into the bakery below her retail space for what begins as an unpaid internship. After a successful three months, Shepherd said they become eligible for hire.
Shepherd said she works with teens from all walks of life, from young mothers to kids that may have gotten themselves into trouble.
“Some people are recognized in the schools as potentially falling through the cracks if they don’t get out into the community and develop ties and some life skills,” Shepherd said.
Shepherd said she starts interns right off working the line, developing knife, cooking and baking skills. They are paired with a mentor to show them the ropes as they progress in their training.
L.L. Bean was recognized with a Corporate Partner Award. Accepting for the company was Janet Wyper.
“I think for us it feels a little odd to accept an award for L.L. Bean because it’s really because we have hundreds and hundreds of employees who donate their time,” Wyper said.
Wyper said the company has an entire infrastructure in place to set up for events such as blood drives and recruit other employees to work with the Red Cross. Some of their staff are even trained in disaster relief services.
L.L. Bean used to have the blood mobile come to the retail store for employees to donate. Wyper said that while that always proved to be a successful endeavor, it didn’t take long to occur to them that they could do even more good by opening the blood drives up to customers and the general public.
“That’s been kind of neat to have employees donating blood along with customers and then we get community members come in and volunteer along with employees,” Wyper said.
Wyper said there’s a number of ways L.L. Bean works with the Red Cross beyond providing much needed volunteer power, corporate donations and blood drive space.
Whenever there’s a disaster, Wyper said Bean’s officials are reaching out to the Red Cross as the “boots on the ground” to find out where the greatest need is.
“That also gives us a chance to communicate to our employees because we have such a generous community of people that work here,” Wyper said.
The Red Cross reported that L.L. Bean has hosted more blood drives than any company in the state, collecting more than 1,200 units of blood. Last year, they also partnered with the Red Cross to build a team of 30 disaster responders.
The Red Cross said that following their Zero2Hero program, employees can be deployed at any time to respond and work in a Red Cross shelter.
“I’m accepting, but I’m most definitely accepting on behalf of several thousands of hours from people who give their own time,” Wyper said.
dmcintire@timesrecord.com
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