Community investment

Social or economic exclusion can be as potent as disease in limiting opportunities for people to contribute to their community’s success. At Standard Chartered, we believe we have a role as an international bank, working in some of the world’s most challenging markets, to use our skills and experience to help address some of the issues which adversely impact social development. We contribute to the sustainability of our business by helping to create healthy and economically vibrant communities.

“I don’t think education’s role in sustainable development is explored enough. Without a focus on education, the social development dimensions of the strategy seem something of an afterthought, perhaps even a little gratuitous.” Jo Beale,
London School of Economics, Development Studies

We can best achieve these goals through action linked to our core business and through our employees. We support three main international programmes as well as activities in individual countries:

• Seeing is Believing, a global initiative to tackle the causes of avoidable blindness that has restored the eyesight of over two million people in 17 countries. In 2008, we launched A New Vision, to bring eye-care services to a further 20 million people in 20 cities across the world by 2015
• Living with HIV, a global HIV and AIDS education programme that aims to reduce the number of new HIV infections and meet our Clinton Global Initiative commitment to educate one million people about HIV and AIDS by 2010. Our HIV Champion network of peer educators more than doubled in size in 2008. We also launched Living with HIV programmes for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Africa, significantly expanding our education outreach
• Nets for Life, a regional programme to tackle malaria, has distributed over one million anti-malarial nets in 14 countries across Africa since the project began in 2006. We have begun training employees as ‘malaria agents’ to educate communities about the disease and to achieve our goal of supplying a further five million nets by 2013

Sichuan signing ceremony

Standard Chartered committed over $3 million towards reconstruction efforts following the devastating Sichuan earthquake in China, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people, and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

In addition, the Bank set up a relief fund for donations from our employees in China, and in keeping with the Standard Chartered spirit, many employees from around the world also wanted to help. A number of markets, including Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK also set up accounts for employee donations.

 

South America

Living with HIV ‘Train the Trainer workshop’

Bangladesh

Eye hospital sees benefits of volunteers

China

Over $2 million donated for earthquake reconstruction