Project Rudolph: Embark & DePelchin Children’s Center Spread the Holiday Spirit in Texas

How we performed the first-ever autonomous gift haul to provide gifts to children and families in Houston, San Antonio, and Austin.

This holiday season, Embark partnered with DePelchin Children’s Center’s annual Holiday Project to provide Christmas gifts to children and families across Texas.

DePelchin Children’s Center runs an accredited foster care and adoption agency along with many programs committed to supporting and sustaining children and the families who care for them. Every year, DePelchin’s Holiday Project provides gifts and basic need items to hundreds of children and families in the Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Lubbock areas. To do this, DePelchin needs to transport gifts collected at their main Houston office to San Antonio and Austin to be distributed to children in their care.

Embark recently expanded into Texas, and when we heard about DePelchin’s holiday deliveries, we knew this was the best possible first delivery for us to make with our new Houston-San Antonio autonomous truck route.

Embark volunteered to provide transport services for the wish list gifts of the DePelchin Holiday Project, and made a $20,000 donation to DePelchin to support the critical work they do across Texas.

Embark is thrilled to be part of the Houston and Texas community, and to have the opportunity to work with organizations like DePelchin. I started working in robotics when I was 11, and getting that start at a young age has been really important in my life. The work DePelchin does to ensure all children are part of safe, caring homes is so crucial, and we are proud to have an opportunity to work together.

Our organizations’ values are closely aligned — we are both committed to changing the world by thinking of new ways to provide vital services to the communities we serve, and to improve the lives of everyone — from truck drivers to children to all community members.

In addition to our work with DePelchin, our Texas team has been hard at work from our offices at the G-Tech Innovation Center, and was honored to participate in the Brookshire Police Department Toy Drive this year.

We hope these contributions will help make the holidays special for the children and their local communities. Happy holidays!

To find out more ways to support DePelchin’s mission, visit https://www.depelchin.org/donate/.

Interested in joining Embark in Texas? See our open roles in Texas on Embark’s Careers page.