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Southwest Airlines Community

Community Outreach

For more than 50 years, Southwest has connected people and championed communities. Whether in the air or on the ground, we believe community is more than a place - it’s at the heart of what brings us together.

It all starts with the Heart.
  • $6.4M invested in
    Building connections
  • 1.2K+ Hours of
    Employee volunteerism
  • 21 Investments made
    in Southwest cities
Programs
Resilient Communities Impact Program
  • Resilient Communities Impact Program
  • America's Sunday Suppers
  • Heart of the Community Grants
Resilient Communities Impact Program

The Resilient Communities Impact Program, a partnership between Southwest and Points of Light, is a whole-community effort, engaging local changemakers to take individual and collective action to transform low-income neighborhoods into thriving places of opportunity. By focusing on how communities look, feel and function, Southwest and Points of Light hope to strengthen cross-sector participation and connections, instill a greater sense of identity and pride and increase the quality of life and support the livelihoods of residents/neighbors.

America's Sunday Suppers

Southwest is proud to partner with Points of Light in support of America’s Sunday Suppers in an effort to build connections among people and communities. America’s Sunday Supper events bring people together from diverse backgrounds to engage in dialogue around community issues. Neighbors are encouraged to come together to share a meal and conversation, because connections are the key to building stronger more vibrant and more inclusive communities. In 2016, nearly 46,000 people came together for America’s Sunday Supper events.

Heart of the Community Grants

Heart of the Community grants leverage a community’s assets to create vibrant public spaces that connect people, creating a foundation for more resilient communities.

 

  • $3.4M
    Total value of initial SWA investment *
  • 2.5M
    Site visitors
  • 1.4M
    Event attendees
  • 147
    New jobs created
  • $7.7M
    In visitor spending
  • 1,200+
    Hours of Employee volunteerism

* With initial seed money of $735,000, we have helped these project sites leverage an additional $2,675,731 - bringing the total value to $3,410,731.


Collaborators

Project for Public Spaces

Southwest Airlines and Project for Public Spaces have partnered to provide technical assistance to local community partners who seek to bring new life to their public spaces. Through the placemaking process, our work serves as a catalyst for building sustainable, healthy, inclusive and economically viable communities.

Projects

To date, Southwest has invested over $6.4M in building connections and has supported projects in 20 communities through the Heart of the Community program. Through a community-driven approach, local partners collaborate with Southwest to move the vision and goals for their cities and communities forward by strengthening connections between people and the places they share.

Community Outreach activity map
Nature and sunrise

Blog posts about Heart of the Community
Employee ‎02-08-2019 08:48 AM
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The following blog post was written by Elena Madison, Vice President of Project for Public Spaces Since 2013, the Southwest Airlin...

Employee ‎11-19-2018 09:44 AM
4224 Views
0 Comments

At Southwest Airlines, we put our Heart into everything we do. We do this by connecting People to what’s important in their lives,...

Employee ‎07-27-2018 10:23 PM
4255 Views
1 Comments

The following blog post was co-written by Andrea Cavanagh and Anna Knuth The Southwest Heart is about loving people, building resi...

Read more blog posts about Heart of the Community