Giving Back: Making Ties with Our Community.

We're proud to have been in business in Detroit for nearly a decade and want to give back to the community that has supported our growth. We want to share what we can through assisting your organization with in-kind donations, internship programs, youth mentoring support and other creative ways to help Make Ties with our community.

Grow Detroit's Young Talent

With the help of Mayor Mike Duggan and Detroit’s philanthropic and corporate leaders, Cyberoptix is proud to partner with Grow Detroit’s Young Talent to provide summer work experience right in our Detroit studio!

GDYT is a six week summer youth employment program that combines work readiness training with on-the-job experience designed to prepare Detroiters, ages 14 to 24, for Detroit’s workforce.

The program was created in 2009 by the Detroit Youth Employment Consortium, a public-private partnership developed by The Skillman Foundation. Each year since, the program has raised funding to provide an increasing number of paid work experiences for Detroit youth.

In 2014, the Grow Detroit’s Young Talent program raised $2.7 million from community donors and grant makers to provide paid work experiences to 1,897 youth. Through expanded coordination with the Detroit Mayor’s Office, the program intends to train and employ 5,000 Detroit youth in 2015.

Cyberoptix community outreach

Career Day Visits and Field Trips

Recently we joined community leaders for Career Day at Clippert Academy Magnet School in Southwest Detroit, an important mentoring day for students in our city. Clippert has an abundance of partnerships to help students learn and grow. We're proud to have been able to present to their students that while budgets for art education sadly continue to diminish, there still are many possibilities for fruitful careers in the arts.

We also give tours to more advanced students. One of our favorites thus far was showing a University of Michigan printmaking class what it is really like to work in a silkscreening workshop, from design to printing to fulfilling online and wholesale orders.

If your school is near us and has a career day or would like to tour a working print shop, please reach out to us, we'd love to help if our schedule permits! 

Transitional Work Programs.

We've worked extensively with professional wardrobe Lending Libraries helping to outfit the homeless and incarcerated who are on the journey to restarting their lives.

Jazmin is an East Coast librarian working with adult job seekers. Through generous tie donations from Cyberoptix Tie Lab, she has been able to help connect gentlemen to their very own ties, a first for many of them.

At the library, people come for resume help and job flyers, but a tie can help a job seeker truly feel prepared and professional. Attendees of Hakim Cunningham Consulting's career workshop received career resources and advice and were able to take ties home.

The residents at Wyman Community Reentry will also have ties to help them look professional at meetings and job interviews, vital for helping these returning citizens reintegrate into their communities.

Teens will also have a chance to customize ties, adding personal flair to their very own dapper accessory and getting them thinking about careers.

Necktie donations to your cause

If you are a nonprofit or 501(c)(3) institution and are seeking in-kind donations (for example, products for a raffle or auction) we'd love to help when possible. We'll review all requests and we'll let you know ASAP if we can help.

We're sorry we can't donate to all organizations that ask, but we certainly do like to help when we can!

A very small sampling of those who we're proud to have assisted through in-kind donations:

  • Gleaner's Food Bank
  • Human Rights Campaign
  • Care of Swarthmore College (Crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth)
  • Autism Speaks
  • Gilda's Club Metro Detroit
  • The Rainbow Connection (benefit for children with terminal illness)
  • Ventura County Sheriff’s Search & Rescue
  • Rape Response Services
  • Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
  • Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
  • Forgotten Friends of Long Island (raffle to benefit stray/abandoned pets after Hurricane Sandy)

We thank you for creating more good in the world. We're excited to help out a little with some of our printy goodness!