Cox Employees and Customers Weather a Destructive Storm
Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005 and left the New Orleans
area with thousands of displaced citizens and billions of dollars in damage. As
the largest cable TV provider in Louisiana, Cox committed to restoring our cable
telecommunications system in the area as quickly as possible and to be a key
partner in rebuilding the city.
To help our New Orleans employees recover and reestablish their lives after
Katrina, the Cox Employee Disaster Relief Fund was created. Our employees, cus-tomers and business partners generously contributed to the Fund, and our company
matched employee donations dollar for dollar, raising more than $3 million.
Upholding our overall commitment to the New Orleans community, our
parent company, Cox Enterprises, contributed $10 million in cash and in-kind
donations to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, supporting organizations such as
the American Red Cross, United Way, Habitat for Humanity and Boys & Girls
Clubs of America. We also partnered with Superstation WGN’s “HomeTeam,” a
reality show that presents deserving families with a home of their own, to help
rebuild a local Boys & Girls Club, an integral part of the community.
Within a year, Cox New Orleans made historic progress in taking care of
its employees, customers and community in a fashion many residents said was
unmatched by other local companies. As customers returned to the area, Cox
employees worked constantly to reconnect their cable as soon as power crews
repaired or replaced power lines. As of September 2006, more than 90 percent
of Cox’s network had been restored, and additional redundancy has been added
to help prevent outages should future disasters occur.

The Kid in Us Is a Team Player
Around the one-year anniversary of Katrina, Cox launched the BandTogether
campaign to recognize the extraordinary work and resilience of our New Orleans
employees. For two weeks, Cox employees across the country recognized the
efforts of our New Orleans colleagues simply by purchasing and wearing a wrist-band to show support. Money raised from the BandTogether campaign funded
a special event at an area zoo for local employees and their families, giving them
a chance to escape the worry and stress of rebuilding their lives.
From the dedication of our New Orleans employees and supporting efforts
throughout the company, Cox’s actions following Hurricane Katrina demonstrate
that our company remains committed to our customers, employees and com-munities at all times – and particularly when it’s needed most, in a crisis.

Today’s mass media offer a wealth of entertainment and
educational information. The curious kid in us wants to explore
it all, but we know not all content is suitable for children. That’s
why we created Take Charge! Smart Choices for Your Cox
Digital Home, a community outreach campaign that empowers
parents and caregivers to manage their children’s access to mass
media content. The initiative strives to increase customers’
awareness and use of the parental controls and filtering tools
already available on their cable and Internet services.
Providing tools and resources that are easy to understand
and implement, Take Charge! helps parents find great educa-tional TV shows and web sites while setting safe boundaries
around content. Program components include a comprehensive
web site, a free resource guide, local workshops and tools to
help parents learn how to talk to their children about appro-priate TV, Internet and telephone use. Since the program
began, Cox has devoted $25 million in advertising time to
teach parents to use parental controls and encourage smart
choices among Cox customers and their families.
As part of Take Charge!, we invited high school students
and their parents and guardians from Cox communities across
the country to Washington, D.C. for a Teen Summit on Internet
Safety. Moderated by Take Charge! spokesperson and America’s
Most Wantedhost John Walsh, the Summit addressed the ways
teens use the Internet, including popular online networking
sites. Students also suggested how to improve communication
between parents and children to encourage safer use of the
Internet. The teen delegates then went to Capitol Hill, where
they met with elected officials from their respective states to
discuss the positive and negative aspects of Internet use from
a teen perspective.
To increase Internet safety on a daily basis, Cox High Speed
Internet offers customers free parental controls, making it
easier to track children’s online activities. With these tools,
parents can block inappropriate web sites, receive daily email
reports of their children’s web history, and limit the amount
of time their kids spend surfing the Internet. Parents can also
set what time of day their children have web access. With filter
options for children of all ages, parents can monitor kids from
elementary school to high school.