Mauritania

Since June, Société Générale Mauritania has been helping CREN, a rehabilitation centre for children suffering from malnutrition. This centre takes in and cares for children with severe malnutrition. These children generally come from disadvantaged and/or polygamous families.

When they visited the centre, SGM staff provided necessary food supplements for the children to recover, whilst upper management has agreed to supply staple foods such as rice, vegetable oil, eggs, sugar, beans, millet, etc. to the centre each month.

Serbia

Société Générale Srbija is a strategic partner of the “Food Bank” organisation in Belgrade, which organises the distribution of food and other supplies to socially vulnerable citizens. It was founded two years ago.

The financial aid provided by the bank is directed towards organising actions related to collecting and distributing food as well as transporting goods to beneficiaries. So far, around 40 tonnes of food for more than 2,400 socially vulnerable and displaced persons have been distributed.

During the 2009 Citizen Commitment Week, Société Générale Srbija organised voluntary action in cooperation with the Food Bank aimed at distributing food to the Cukarica Social Welfare Centre (in a Belgrade neighbourhood) on 17th June 2009. The food was distributed to the Roma population, who live in very difficult conditions.

For the World Food Day 2009, Société Générale Srbija organised three collection centres in the bank network in Belgrade, Nis and Novi Sad. The results of this action revealed that, in less than a week,the employees managed to collect  2,585 tons of essential foodstuff.

Romania

Within the framework of the partnership with the Red Cross, BRD sponsored the Food Bank project by providing financial aid of 10,000 euros. A gala organised by the Red Cross was held in September 2009 and broadcast live on Romanian national television. Performers, businessmen, sports stars and partners of the Red Cross all participated in this event. An auction of personal items donated by the stars present at the gala was also held during the evening.

Following the gala, Romania’s main telephone networks enabled funds to be raised through messages and calls to special numbers. The money collected was donated to the Food Bank programme.

France

Since 2000, the Talents & Partage association created and run by current and retired Group staff has participated in France’s national Food Bank fundraising programme. The French Food Bank Federation incorporates close to 80 charities that fight food wastage in order to feed the hungry. In France, they supply 4,850 other charities that help 680,000 particularly vulnerable people.