Corporate Volunteering 2023: Commitment to the environment and society

#teamERGO is dedicated: Find out how ERGO employees across the Group have once again been involved in good causes relating to climate protection and social projects this year…

From A for Austria, B for Belgium, G for Germany, L for Latvia and Lithuania to S for Spain: This year, companies in several countries and numerous employees once again took part in the international ERGO Corporate Volunteering programmes. Various action days took place throughout the year. For example, tree planting campaigns, blood donations in companies, excursions with people in need of care and people with disabilities, cooking campaigns in soup kitchens or volunteer work with disadvantaged children or in animal shelters. ERGO attaches great importance to promoting the social commitment of its employees. This is why corporate volunteering programmes are an integral part of ERGO's corporate culture. A few examples illustrate just how colourful and diverse this year's activities were in the various countries:

• In Lithuania, volunteers helped to plant over 50,000 trees together with local communities and other partners. Around 90 colleagues from Latvia realized their tree-planting campaign together with children in order to instil a love of nature and environmental protection in the new generation.
  
  
• Preparing lunch for the homeless was an opportunity for 70 colleagues in Austria to do something good for many people and to get into a conversation with them.
  
  
• Over 177 employees in Spain took part in local corporate volunteering programmes. One highlight was the Solidarity Holidays, where volunteers donated holidays to accompany boys and girls with intellectual disabilities and Down's syndrome and experience various educational and leisure activities with them.
  
  
• Ingrid Horno, Health Claims Management, about “Solidarity Holidays DKV”: "I studied occupational therapy and worked in this field for a while. The positive experiences in the project now make me recognise what we can bring to the children and their families, but above all what they bring to us."
  
  
• In Germany, a whole range of activities took place as part of the Social Days in Germany at the Düsseldorf, Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg and Munich locations. In Düsseldorf, for example, the motivated employees spent a day serving breakfast and lunch to needy citizens in a café, where they engaged in dialogue. In November, around 50 colleagues in Germany planted a total of 1,880 trees and helped to deforest a moorland landscape

(Text: Sabine Bosler / Julia Heck)