For us, to be a successful business in the long term, healthy workforce communities and economies are essential. Our work with local communities also helps to engage our employees, provide opportunities for product innovation and differentiate our brand. We capitalise on our core skills and resources, such as training employees to become peer educators to fight HIV/AIDS.

We use criteria within our Community Evaluation Framework to help us identify initiatives that bring real community and economic benefit. This Framework acts as a checklist to ensure each programme addresses employee engagement, skill development, customer involvement and brand development. The Framework helps shape our work around two global programmes, Living with HIV and Seeing is Believing; a regional programme in Africa called Nets for Life; and Goal – aimed at empowering women.

We understand the need to continuously assess our community commitments, so this year we started to roll out the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) model. This helps us to measure community inputs, outputs and impacts. Helping countries accurately report community inputs was the first step. In 2008, we will focus on reporting outputs and impacts.

Living with HIV

It is estimated that there were 2.5 million new HIV infections in 2007, many of which were in the communities where we operate. With neither a cure nor vaccine probable in the near future, we believe education and testing remain crucial in order to win the fight against HIV/AIDS. That is why we have made a commitment through the Clinton Global Initiative to educate one million people on HIV/AIDS before the end of 2010. We will achieve this ambitious target through partnering with other organisations to help them educate their own workforce using our volunteer HIV Champion peer educators. This year we formed a number of partnerships to achieve our target.

For example, our HIV Champions in Hong Kong started training employees of Crown Worldwide in September 2007 to become HIV Champions. Crown Worldwide, in turn, will train its remaining 4.500 employees throughout 2008.

Our new partnership with the Virgin Group will educate their global workforce of 50,000 employees.

We are also working with our SME Banking clients offering training resources to help them manage HIV/AIDS in their workplaces. We have also formed a global partnership with AIESEC, the world’s largest student organisation, to educate 300,000 students, who are potential customers and recruits.

Seeing is Believing

Seeing is Believing (SiB) is now in its fifth year of helping to tackle preventable blindness. In Phase I, SiB restored the eyesight of 56,000 people through cataract operations. Phase II helped restore the sight of a million people.

The goal of Phase III of SiB was to raise $10 million by 2010 to make a difference to the lives of 10 million people across 20 countries. We have already met this fundraising target, three years ahead of schedule, and have a portfolio of 35 projects across 17 countries with projected beneficiaries numbering 10.3 million.

Even at this early stage of implementation, the benefit is apparent. For example, the programme in Kwara State, Nigeria, has already treated 130,000 people for river blindness (800,000 people are likely to be treated by the end of the project year), performed 1,300 cataract operations (78 per cent of this year’s target for that area), distributed vitamin A tablets to over 350,000 people and performed 455 refractive error treatments, as well as trained 15 nurses in primary eye care and trained four ophthalmologists.

In 2008, we will launch SiB Phase IV – a more ambitious programme of sustainable eye care targeted at the poor, marginalised communities in cities where the Bank has a presence. This will have a sharp focus on the sustainability of its projects and link more closely with business priorities. Projects will be guided by the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness/World Health Organization Vision 2020’s comprehensive eye care strategy which builds in sustainability as a key feature.

Goals

Goal, our women’s empowerment programme, was inspired by the fact that sustained economic development requires women to play an active role. Goal uses sports as a platform to bring young women together to gain the skills and confidence they need to become leaders in their communities – for example, through training in healthcare, personal finances and communications.

In 2007, we completed the pilot for Goal in partnership with the International Federation of Netball Associations and Naz, the NGO which implements the project on our behalf. We engaged community elders and the participants’ parents to build community support. Our employees have also played a key role in the design and delivery of some of the training modules.

Nets for Life

Launched in 2006, Nets for Life aims to distribute one million long-lasting insecticide treated mosquito nets across 16 African countries by the end of 2008 as part of our efforts to fight malaria. Over the last two years, the programme has distributed over 680,000 nets and trained 5,000 people to teach their communities about malaria prevention in partnership with Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD). Evaluation has shown a noticeable improvement in the levels of knowledge on malaria, an increase in households in possession of nets, and an increase in children and pregnant women sleeping under nets. Work has started on the next phase of Nets for Life, refining the model to allow for more staff engagement opportunities.

More information on the following topics is available on our website:

• Our Community investment approval and local case studies; and
• Seeing is Believing.

Our goals and achievements in 2007

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Our goals for 2007	Status	What we have done
Launch Clinton Global Initiative commitment to educate one million people about HIV/AIDS by end 2010	Completed	Launched partnerships with AIESEC, Virgin and Crown; commissioned review of our existing training material; ran SME programmes; increased number of HIV Champions
Set up a Phase III campaign to raise $10 million by 2010 to make a difference to the lives of 10 million people across 20 countries	Part completed	We have already raised $10 million and partnered with the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness. 32 projects set up to benefit 10 million people
Take 60 young women from under-privileged communities in Delhi through Goal	Completed	Pilot completed with 70 girls participating. Evaluation shows positive impact on confidence and behaviour. Second phase design complete
Assist a delegation of emerging Chinese women leaders to attend the 2007 Vital Voices Pan-African Women’s Leadership summit in Cape Town	Completed	Supported the delegation to foster partnerships between African and Chinese women leaders. Sponsored African business women to attend the follow-up ‘Women as an Economic Force’ programme in Shanghai
Distribute one million long-lasting insecticide treated nets in Africa by the end of 2008	Completed	Launched in 11 African countries with positive results. Over 500,000 nets distributed in 2007
Pilot the employee volunteering development scheme and complete the reward scheme pilot Develop robust policy and guidelines for our response to disasters	Completed	Development and reward pilot completed. Commenced review
Develop robust policy and guidelines for our response to disasters	Ongoing	Policy to be implemented in April 2008

“SMEs face a number of barriers in implementing HIV workplace programmes. Standard Chartered is contributing to HIV/AIDS education resources to help SME clients be more sustainable.” Richard Samans, Managing Director, World Economic Forum.