Sustainability
Corporate Social Responsibility
We lay emphasis on 7 key areas - sustainable lending, access to finance, tackling financial crime, environment, employee wellbeing, community, responsible selling & marketing. Standard Chartered has demonstrated its commitment to the community through the various community projects it has undertaken in partnership with the Ministry of Health, Uganda Red Cross, Sight Savers International, World Vision, Church of Uganda, Water Aid, Land O’ Lakes and Ministry of Education. The Bank as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility has focused on the economically disadvantaged targeting Youth, Health, Education, micro-finance and environment, leading to reduction of poverty, enhancement of health and education in the communities in which we operate as well as supporting sustainable initiatives.
Community
- We built a school in Gulu worth USD 100,000 for internally displaced children
- Under the NetsforLife project, together with partners, in 2008 we will give out 165,000 mosquito nets at a cost of UGS 320m
- Under our project Seeing is Believing we have screened over 12,000 people and restored sight to 1,200 over the last 5 years. In 2008 we screened 10,000 people and restored sight to 1402 people
- We provided water wells in Jinja, Iganga, Mpigi, Mbale and Mbarara. In 2008, we drilled boreholes in Gulu, Jinja and Mbale at USD 65,000
- Under the Success By Choice program we incorporated an effective learning approach toward health, nutrition, HIV/Aids, Sports and Life skills for children in 28 schools at a tune of USD 88.000
- Standard Chartered Donated UGX 110 million to flood victims in the North, Northeast and Eastern parts of the country
- We renovated a dilapidated classroom block at Salaama School for the Blind at a cost of UGX 50 million (US$ 29,154). The Bank also donated the first computer owned by the school
- We have an all inclusive non-discriminatory HIV policy which includes the provision of voluntary counseling and anti- retroviral drugs for employees, their spouses & children
- The Bank has an on-going SCB education programme for staff & external parties under Living with HIV programme
- Standard Chartered provided a cardiac machine to Mulago hospital
- Each staff of the Bank is encouraged to spend 2 paid work days p.a. on community activities in a given year under Employee Volunteering Programme
Sponsorship
- Sponsored the Uganda team for the Greatest Race On Earth marathons spanning across HK, Singapore, Mumbai and Nairobi. The Marathon offers a record prize pool of over US$1million
- Sponsored an AIESEC workshop attended by participants from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania at USD 1,400
- Sponsored the Mbarara sanitation Week to a tune of UGX 1m
- The Hima Cement 2008 Rugby tournament received a UShs 10 million boost from Standard Chartered Bank.
- Sponsored the Financial Literacy Week in partnership with the Investors Club, Uganda to inculcate good money management skills in Ugandans.
Environment
- In partnership with Paul Rippey (working with Al Gore) Standard Chartered arranged for a presentation to Ugandan Members of Parliament and officials on global warming, with the messages focused on East Africa and Uganda.
- In Uganda, Standard Chartered led the way in encouraging staff to use fiber bags / baskets instead of polythene bags prior to the government ban on polythene bags came into effect in October 2007.
- In June 2008 Standard Chartered planted over 100 fruit trees in the Bank- sponsored school for internally displaced children in Gulu, Cet Kana, Northern Uganda, in 2006.
- In addition Standard Chartered planted over 50 trees in Salaama, a school for the blind.
- The Bank has introduced paperless campaigns discouraging staff from printing; introducing double page printing to meet the Bank’s pledge to reduce paper consumption by 20% per employee.
- The Bank screened Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth to over 200 customers, leading and influential government officials and environmentalists, as well as to over 150 employees and also donated a copy of the movie to the President of Uganda.
- Standard Chartered Uganda has donated over USD2500 to facilitate the activities of the National Environment Management Authority.
- As part of staff support for forest conservation, 30 staff of the Bank toured Mabira forest, the largest forest in Uganda which the government was trying to give out to investors for sugar cane farming. This plan has now gone in abeyance.
- The Bank has partnered with recycling factories and sends them plastic water bottles collected from staff for recycling.