Sansiri teams up with Unicef for Thai kids

 “We are interested in focusing on children because they are the future of the country,” Sansiri’s president Srettha Thavisin said in an interview with The Nation.
Concern about nutritional deficiencies in Thai children – especially iodine deficiency – began about three years ago. That encouraged the company to join with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) to push iodine consumption. Its success was reflected in the former government’s passage of the Iodine Act, which obliges foods to contain iodine.
Since then, Sansiri has continued with education, health, and sporting activities benefitting children.
In relation to children’s health, it continues its focus on nutrition, and maintains its promotion of iodine consumption.
For education, the company provides scholarships for poor children, and maintains its support until they graduate.
In sport, the company runs the “Sansiri Academy”. It offers soccer training on every weekend morning for kids who dream of being football stars, at five football fields in Bangkok. The training fields are on Buddha Mondhol, Prachachun, Ram Indra, Bang Na and Aksa roads. Currently, the Sansiri Academy caters for 2,200 would-be footballers, and some of the most successful have gone on to join the national soccer team.
Last month, Sansiri took its commitment to the country’s children one step further. It announced an official partnership with Unicef to develop the quality of life for Thai children with a new programme called “Children are everyone's business”. Once again, it will focus on education, health and sport, and in running for the next three years, will have the distinction of being the longest cooperative programme to date involving the United Nations agency and a Thai corporation.
The cooperative effort aims to inspire other companies to come up with sustainable CSR projects that could concentrate on other areas. Internationally, Unicef has joint projects with leading companies like IKEA.
Srettha said that aside from the donations involved, the new programme showed Sansiri’s commitment to developing the quality of children's life and protecting their rights. The company began this commitment within its own corporate premises. Among other things, the company has a room for female staff who have to breastfeed babies. It also has a policy against the hiring of child labour.
Srettha said the country had many social problems, but Sansiri wanted to concentrate its efforts on children.
“If we have quality children, the country will have sustainable growth in the long term. This is why we focus on children for our CSR programme,” he said. "CSR is not about publicity. It is about a total outcome for society.
“It took us more than 10 years to achieve stable business growth and now it's time to return benefits to society. We hope this will be an example for other corporations – to do anything to improve our society," Srettha said.