Before discussing United Way, I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who attended last month’s Andouille Festival.

Marathon Petroleum was proud to serve as Presenting Sponsor, and we thoroughly enjoyed the camaraderie and festivities. We hope you did too!

From start to finish, the festival was first rate, and we continue to be thankful to Parish President Natalie Robottom and her staff for the opportunity to partner. Not surprisingly, the food and music were absolutely fantastic, and early returns suggest we may have achieved record attendance.

If you weren’t able to attend this year, please make a note to join us next year, as it’s a wonderful way to celebrate our parish with family, friends and neighbors!

Every year, employees at Marathon Petroleum pledge support to United Way through payroll deductions, auctions, raffle drawings, benefit lunches and golf outings. This is the same for all our locations throughout the company — and importantly, for every dollar contributed by a Marathon Petroleum employee, the company will match 62 cents.

This allows us to substantially enhance our support to United Way agencies and directly equates to helping more people. I’m proud to say our employees in Garyville have always “walked the talk” on community support and have made us the largest United Way contributor in St. John Parish — and our employees’ support continues to grow.

In 2014, we set a Garyville refinery record with over $388,000 raised for United Way with approximately 80 percent employee participation. This represented a 19 percent increase in funds raised from the prior year.

In 2015, our employees surpassed those numbers and set new records, generating over $427,000 and achieving 88 percent employee participation.

We could not be prouder of our employees and would like to thank them for personifying our company’s core values.

I would also like to thank our contractors and vendors for their continuing United Way partnership. Together, we’ll continue to grow our campaign and expand the reach of available assistance.

In addition to United Way, we are also proud to support our military veterans and service members through a variety of events and initiatives.

On Veterans Day (Nov. 11,) we’ll be participating in the parish’s Veterans Day Parade and will provide a donation to the Southeast Louisiana War Veterans Home in Reserve. We also plan to volunteer at the Combat Marines Golf Outing Nov. 12 and will generate care packages for more than 100 U.S. service men and women protecting our freedoms around the world.

It’s meaningful to us that many of our employees are veterans — but whether employees or not, we would like to thank all U.S. veterans for their service and sacrifice.

As always, I look forward to next month’s column and remain thankful to L’Observateur for this communication opportunity. Should you have any questions about our refinery’s operations or activities in the community, please contact us at 985-535-2241.

Jaime De La Cruz is a human resources manager for Marathon Petroleum. He can be reached at jjdelacruz@marathonpetroleum.com.