CSR briefs

Krungthai-AXA Life Insurance CEO David Korunic recently led a team to help build check dams in Mae Chaem district, Chiang Mai province. They worked on five of these small, temporary dams to help control water flows, prevent flash floods and landslides, and reserve water for the dry season. 

The project follows the firm’s funding to CARE International for its “Where the Rain Falls” scheme. The object is to study and research the impact of changes in rain patterns affecting food security and migration of people in a community. This research has been undertaken for three years in eight countries. 

In Thailand, AXA Group has collaborated with the Raks Thai Foundation for fieldwork in Mae Chaem district.

 

EU-funded workshop back for third year

A project supported by the European Union in Thailand has held a workshop on lessons learned from three years of cooperation and suggesting the way forward on sustainable consumption and production (SCP). 

Government agencies, municipalities and the private sector got together to provide valuable input to the workshop. The project has served since October 2011 as a framework for dialogue among Thai governmental agencies to strengthen SCP policies.

The project is part of the EU-funded SWITCH-Asia programme, which helps 19 countries promote SCP in both the public and private sectors and to share experiences among those countries.

In Thailand, the project has been implemented by the Department of Industrial Works within the Ministry of Industry, the Pollution Control Department, the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, the Office of Natural Resources and Environment Policy and Planning within the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, and by the Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board. 

Technical expertise has been provided by German International Cooperation (GIZ), the Thailand Environment Institute and the Centre for Sustainable Consumption and Production in Wuppertal, Germany.

 

DHL prepares youth for brighter future

DHL Thailand, part of Deutsche Post DHL, a postal and logistics group, is working to improve local communities through career-oriented training programmes for students of SOS Children’s Villages Thailand.

The training sessions include aptitude and personality tests for the participants, English-language exams designed to improve performance at job interviews, and a series of lectures and seminars led by DHL executives with advice and practical tips on how to develop career success and personal development.

“All of us at DHL in Thailand are passionately committed to actively and systematically responding to the educational needs of underprivileged youth in Thailand,” said Chananyarak Phetcharat, managing director of DHL Express Thailand and Indochina.

“These young people have so much ambition, drive and potential. All they lack is the hands-on, helpful mentoring, career guidance and job qualification training that we are willing and qualified to provide.”

DHL’s provision of career guidance, mentoring and internships combined with financial support for SOS Youth and Education programmes provides young students with the essential confidence, knowledge and life enhancing skills important in developing countries where career enhancing employment and empowerment is most challenging.

DHL launched its global partnership with SOS Children’s Villages in 2009. The partnership helps provide young people between 15 and 25 with better opportunities for a professional career, an independent and steady source of income and a self-determined life. 

In addition to GoTeach, the company is focused on GoGreen (protecting the environment) and GoHelp (disaster preparedness, response and recovery) programmes.

 

Etihad Airlines brings smiles to thousands

Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, collaborated with Operation Smile for the charity’s 25th-anniversary medical mission to Vietnam. 

The “Next Era of Smiles” mission was Operation Smile’s biggest ever in Asia, providing more than 5,000 smiles to children born with facial deformities or requiring dental treatment.

Volunteers from Etihad Airways’ Vietnam and Abu Dhabi offices helped patients during surgery pre-screening sessions and distributed blankets and quilts donated by the airline. Some patients travelled from nearby provinces, in some cases travelling for days, in the hope of receiving this free surgery.

Etihad Airways’ general manager Vietnam, Frederic Huynh Quan Dat, said the airline was proud to support Operation Smile as part of its corporate social responsibility programme.

Operation Smile plays an important role in the local community by offering safe, quality surgical care in places where access to surgery would not ordinarily be available, he said. 

“Our hope is that these corrective surgeries will improve the physical, mental and social well-being of each child who was treated,” he said.

Operation Smile is an international children’s medical charity that performs cleft-lip and cleft-palate surgery, and delivers post-operative and ongoing medical therapies to children in more than 60 countries. Operation Smile has provided more than 33,000 free medical procedures in Vietnam since its inception in 1989.