With caring comes mutual benefits — that is the belief of Daimler Financial Services which recently sent a 60-member team to build with HFH Indonesia on Batam island. The build was part of DFS’s Day of Caring in which employees of the Berlin-based company, part of Daimler AG vehicle group, get time off and also use vacation time to work together on community projects. "Both sides benefit from a 'Day of Caring'," said Jatinder Singh, director for DFS’s Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. "On the one hand, poor families receive a simple but decent place to live. On the other hand, we as companies can perform our social responsibility and at the same time show and improve our teamwork skills." The volunteers, from the AAP regional office and from Mercedes Benz Financial Services in Singapore built for the Malomi family over five days. Elisem and Lasmaida Malomi and their five children are among the 20 families in Batam whom DFS is supporting through Habitat’s Build & Save microfinance program. Working together with the home partners, the volunteers dug footings and the pit for the toilet, cut and tied steel reinforcement bars and mixed cement, among other tasks. "I feel every muscle and every bone," said Kean Ka Teoh, who helped organize the build, afterwards. Despite fatigue, he was proud of what the volunteers had achieved as a team in Batam.