Editor’s Note:  This post was originally published on the Interns Expose Amway blog.

We are T-6 days until over 60 Amway interns go full force in competing for the 1^st place title of the 3^rd Annual West Michigan Intern Olympics. This being my third time participating in this event, I am sorry to report that Amway has gotten 2^nd place the two previous years. Good news though; I think the third time is a charm and this is our year!

So, what exactly is the “West Michigan Intern Olympics” anyway? Glad you asked.

This event brings interns from 7 of the top West Michigan companies together for 3 hours of friendly competition. The First Annual Olympics included inaugural companies Amway and Steelcase. Last year, Meijer, Gordon Food Service, Perrigo, and Wolverine Worldwide were added to the mix, and now this year, Spectrum Health interns will be joining.

From my past Olympic experience I can say that this event is a great networking event to not only mingle with fellow Amway interns but to also meet the many young professionals from the above companies. Besides that, participating in the Olympics gives interns the opportunity to trade in their heels for tennis shoes and step out of the office for the afternoon and participate in some fun games. Last year, we had a couple of intense situations as the Red Team (my team) created an amazing strategy for winning the hula hoop contest. Despite the strategy (that seemed fair!) that brought us a win in that event, we were labeled cheaters. It was a fun time, anyway. Moral of that story: listen to event rules carefully. The tug-o-war is always a big hit, and of course, the competition becomes heated during the final trophy winning event when our abilities were tested through a series of brain teasers, math problems, and a relay race.

Last year, we gained a lot of media exposure through the radio, several news articles, television coverage, and we even landed a spot on Fox17 with Emily Richett where she showcased several of us Amway interns.

This event is something you definitely do not want to miss! To stay up-to-date, check out Amway’s Facebook by clicking here.

Amway fought a hard battle last summer, but came out in 2^nd. This year, it is our turn to take home the trophy!

Editor’s Note:  This post was originally published on the Interns Expose Amway blog.

I just learned a valuable lesson in a project brief meeting:

Do you ever have to type a paragraph in a portal that doesn’t have spell check, so you type it in Microsoft Word first then copy and paste it?  Well if you do, make sure you erase it out of the document you typed it in BEFORE printing said document, and BEFORE you hand said document to your mentor and colleague for review.  Just saying.  But seriously, they were good sports about it!

Embarrassing intern moment aside, my project is going well.  So well in fact, that I actually acquired a new but related project from another department.  Right now I am writing training curriculum for Welcome Center tour guides that focuses on different audience segments.  For example, what a distributor hopes to gain out of a tour is different than what a government official hopes to gain out of a tour.  It is my job to figure out what each group wants, and then identify which aspects of the Welcome Center are best utilized to suit that audience’s unique needs.  Once I know all that, then I will turn it into training material.  Make sense?  The new project I got is similar, but actually has a launch date in place…exciting!  More on that when I know more!

Bye for now, but remember, proof read everything!  (to avoid embarrassing moments)

There’s lots to celebrate about our eSpring water purification unit – like UV technology that destroys 99.9 percent of bacteria and viruses in water and a carbon filter that removes contaminants and improves taste, smell and clarity.

But in Singapore, our eSpring unit was promoted for something else – energy efficiency.

Amway’s eSpring and Atmosphere Air Purifier were invited to participate in a 10-day Energy Challenge Fair organized by the Ministry of Environmental and Water Resources’ National Environmental Agency (NEA).

The event was designed to create awareness of the importance of choosing energy and water saving products. It is part of a Ministry effort to encourage Singaporeans to reduce their energy consumption by 10 percent.

Amway Singapore staff and distributors staffed a booth during the fair, demonstrating the benefits of eSpring and Atmosphere and showing how easy it is to meet the challenge of saving energy while improving indoor air and drinking water quality.

As school is letting out for the summer, a different sort of education around the “three Rs” is taking place in China.

Last summer, Amway China launched an ambitious project – an environmental theme park that would travel to 10 cities over six months and reach an estimated 100,000 people with environmental information presented in a fun, playful way.

On World Environment Day, China again hosted the carnival in Tianjin to  encourage people to reuse, reduce and recycle.  Amway also made a 15-million-yuan donation to the General of the China Environmental Protection Fund to support environmental protection activities. 

Through the carnival and gift to the Fund will ensure environmental protection and the lessons of the three Rs of reuse, reduce and recycle will be taught for some time to come.

Amway was honored for being an industry innovator at the U.S. Direct Selling Association’s (DSA) annual meeting in San Francisco June 8.

Our iPhone app won the Technology Innovation Award, one of five industry awards given by the DSA this year.   This award recognizes companies “that have developed an innovative use of technology that has had a demonstrable impact on the business and/or the field sellers.”

That’s an apt description for our iPhone app, the most robust in the direct selling industry.  

We’re honored to receive this recognition.  But we’re even more thrilled by the enthusiastic response the Amway app gets from our distributors, their prospects and customers every time it’s launched.

Editor’s Note:  This post was originally published on the Interns Expose Amway blog.

Hello everyone! My name is Erica Abel and I am the social media intern in Human Resources. This summer, I work in the Talent Acquisition area (specifically College Talent Acquisition), and I love it! This is actually my third internship here at Amway, so clearly, I am thoroughly enjoying myself and learning a lot! I, like Kate, was raised using Amway products so that makes my internship experience all the more exciting! Before I get into some of my internship responsibilities, I will use this post to introduce myself.

I was born and raised in the Grand Rapids area, so naturally, I love going to our great West Michigan beaches! I am currently attending Huntington University, where I will be a senior majoring in Communication Studies. Huntington is located in Indiana, and is definitely different than Grand Rapids! I am a member of Huntington’s Tennis Team, which is always exciting and challenging.

Outside of school, work, and tennis, I have several other passions. I love to travel and go boating. Some of my past travel experiences have included Australia where I was able to spend a lot of time snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef (definitely worth the trip!). Besides that, I also enjoy writing and going to baseball games. My favorite team is, of course, the Detroit Tigers. My family and I make a point to go to a couple of their games each summer.

I am looking forward to meeting and getting to know the rest of the interns this summer. Let me say from past experience that we all have a lot to look forward to!

You couldn’t miss the Amway runners at the May 31 Chestnut Run in Kiev – a total of 12,971 of the 15,100 participants in the benefit for the Ukraine Ministry of Health’s children’s cardiology programs were Amway Ukraine employees and distributors.  

The green-shirted Amway contingent helped raise nearly 380,000 hryvnas – about US$46,000 – for the Ministry program, which serves thousands of children with congenital heart defects each year.

Amway Ukraine had twice the number of participants in the run than last year.  And the Chestnut Run broke a record for the number of participants in a sports or charity event in Ukraine.

The same day,  some 1,100 kilometers away,  more than 400 Amway employees and distributors ran in the Naisten Kymppi 10K run for women in Helsinki.   This was nearly four times the number of Amway runners as  in Amway Finland’s first year with the event.  More importantly, this team raised 16,500 euros - about US$20,000 – for UNICEF. 

It was a day for records to be broken — and lots of hryvnas and euros to be raised for Amway’s One by One children’s charities in Ukraine and Finland.

Our South African affiliate isn’t the only supporter of the FIFA World Cup kicking off later this week. 

Amway Korea is a sponsor of the Korea Republic team, providing Nutrilite supplements and diet and nutrition expertise to the players, coaches and even the “wives and girlfriends” of players.

Hopes are high for this year’s squad.  Team Captain Park Ji-Sung says the team is capable of another “miracle run” similar to that in 2002, when Korea made the FIFA World Cup semifinals.  That was the best showing ever for an Asian team, and one these Korean contenders hope to duplicate this month.

Editor’s Note:  This post was originally published on the Interns Expose Amway blog.

Hello Fellow Interns!

My name is Kate and I’m the student intern within the Protection Services Department. I’m very excited to begin blogging about my experience with Protection Services. Many interns and employees aren’t quite sure what our responsibilities are, and I can tell you- we do far more than just hang out the Main Gate window to check your passes!

For my first entry, I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself.

I’m originally from Grand Rapids, born and raised! I’m an only child, and an Amway kid. When I was young I thought that Amway was a secret government agency- probably because I was a young X-files fan and I thought that World Headquarters looked like an alien spaceship! What an honor it is to be interning at this ‘secret agency’.

I’m passed my sci-fi fascination, but being a true-crime nerd isn’t much better. Once in college at GVSU, I found myself reading Criminal Justice textbooks in my free time…as a Health Science major. After spending countless hours learning about forensics, private security, and criminal investigation, I made the switch to ‘CJ’. I’ll be a senior this year, still set on CJ, with an emphasis on crimes against women and victimology.

In my free-time I’m a self-defense instructor-I teach an assault defense course for women. Becoming a self-defense instructor has been my greatest accomplishment, next to receiving my internship offer, of course! My goal at Amway is to incorporate these classes into my summer project. Being a self-defense instructor, I’m interested in martial arts disciplines. I received a green-belt in Thai-kickboxing, and I have some experience in traditional boxing.

In a previous blog entry, Esther Looker mentioned her love of animals. We’ve got something in common there! I have a soft-spot for all things cute and fuzzy. My current roommate is a rabbit, who is a hoppy, nose-wriggling ball of fluff. Most people are shocked to hear that I’ve never had a bite of steak in my life… and I plan on keeping it that way. I’m a struggling lacto-ovo vegetarian…I relapse with chicken weekly.

I could blab on endlessly about my hobbies, but I’ll end on this note:

Congratulations fellow interns, we’re so lucky to have been given this opportunity at such amazing company. I trust that all of you will do great things within your departments. Good luck, work hard and have fun!

Ke Nako is a Sesotho phrase meaning “it’s time.” It’s also the theme of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Kicking off in just seven short days, the entire world will be watching the opening match between the South African national football team, Bafana Bafana, and Mexico. 

Employees of Amway South Africa will certainly be watching – and making quite a bit of noise, too. Six months ago, Amway purchased Bafana Bafana jerseys and stadium horns called vuvuzelas for the entire staff. They held a press conference publicly pledging their support of the home team, garnering media coverage in Kickoff Magazine as the first corporation to do so.

Since then, the vuvuzelas have gotten louder and the excitement has been building. “Ke Nako” was chosen as the theme because “it’s time” for South Africa to do more than host the world’s most passionate fans, but also, to show the beauty and opportunity that can be found in this nation so young in its unification.

Because we’re a global company, Amway employees have favorite teams all over the world – from Japan to Chile and Italy to New Zealand. But don’t be surprised to see many of us, if only in the back of our hearts and minds, rooting for South Africa.

Makhaya Manie, Amway South Africa external affairs manager, practices his vuvuzela skills in preparation for next week.