On Friday, June 17, during the Discovery Comunications“Discover Your Impact Day,” Adria Alpert Rommvisited four sites where employees in the Maryland area were volunteering their time to community organizations.

She started at the National Zooin Washington, D.C., where volunteers were cleaning habitats, and next went to a veterans’ home, where employees prepared a barbeque and cleaned World War IIera jets and tanks. “Then I went to a diaper bank,” she said, where Discovery folks helped package donated diapers that would later be delivered to needy families, and she visited an inner-city high school where employees helped to weed and prepare for planting a community garden.

MCN Slideshow: Photos From Discovery Communications's "Discover Your Impact Day"

“It’s always a great day for employees around the world,” Romm, the company’s chief human resources and global diversity officer, said of the seventh annual event, which draws about 4,200 employees into volunteer action.

Many end up doing a lot more with the organizations they get to know from their initial visit, and Discovery gives out grants of $3,000 to sites where an employee completes 30 hours of volunteer service. At the D.C.-area diaper bank, it was announced that a $9,000 grant had been awarded, which means three employees committed those 30 hours each. “It’s more than a day,” Romm observed.

Read more about Discovery's corporate social responsibility program and other companies' #CableInTheCommunity public service efforts.