- The Carrefour group renews partnership with NGO Planète Urgence
Boulogne-Billancourt, France, 2017-Jul-06 — /EPR Retail News/ — The Carrefour group has just renewed its partnership with NGO Planète Urgence, so its managers can go on leave and volunteer overseas. The initiative is in line with the company’s diversity approach. For two years now, fifteen or so employees have been able to take part in education-related projects, initiatives to integrate young people with problems into society and drives to do with helping people with disabilities. The group’s collaboration with Planète Urgence is not dissimilar to the various voluntary initiatives in which thousands of Carrefour’s employees have been involved in 10 countries.
Destination humanitarian aid: Madagascar, Cameroon, Senegal, Benin or Indonesia
Since 2015, employees from the Carrefour group’s head office have had opportunities to go and volunteer overseas on aid initiatives. Out in the field, they provide NGOs with their expertise in areas such as office equipment, accounting, management, IT, marketing, communications or foreign languages. The partnership is in the line with Carrefour’s diversity policy and so focuses on education programmes as well as initiatives to integrate young people with problems into society and to include people with disabilities.
These immersive experiences for Carrefour’s teams out in the field have taken the form of socio-educational events for children in the streets of Madagascar, training in the administrative management of an organisation that integrates people with mental disabilities in India and accountancy training for financially managing a micro-loan organisation aimed at women in Indonesia.
Congé Solidaire®: volunteering with Carrefour, how it works!
Carrefour covers the costs that Planète Urgence incurs in sending employees overseas. The assignment last two weeks and employees carry them out with various associations during their own paid holiday. To encourage people to sign up, the company covers half the cost of the airfare. If they want, employees can extend their volunteering by an extra week.
Planète Urgence, a forerunner for volunteer initiatives in France
The Congé Solidaire® initiative was set up in 2000 to enable people to go and volunteer overseas with two aims in mind: get involved in a local development project and make themselves useful. 7850 volunteers have already been able to go and work overseas with Planète Urgence’s support. There are many areas in which people can work, divided into three main categories: socio-educational projects, protecting the planet’s biodiversity and helping adults to bolster and develop their skills. Although the Congé Solidaire® initiative enables people to convert their desire to help into action, all volunteers still need training at the outset and proper supervision: a requirement needs to be identified, volunteers need support before they go, then they need supervision once they are on site, then the results and the impact of what they do to help local people and beneficiary project leaders need to be assessed.
Company volunteering: thousands of Carrefour employees delivering charity aid
Carrefour employees are actively involved in projects all year round in 10 countries, collecting foodstuffs, giving out meals to the world’s poorest people, visiting ill children, creating charity gardens, setting up workshops designed to integrate people into society, etc. In Brazil, 1000 employees gave up their time in 2016 as part of the “Volontario” programme… and 1500 worked on it in Spain. In Argentina, 4000 employees worked with 45 NGOs on the “Sumando Volontades” programme. And nearly 3000 employees have been involved in the international donation campaign which is organised every year by the Carrefour Foundation and Food Banks in 10 countries. Employees do most of this volunteering during working hours. In France in 2016, thousands of employees raised €2 million to help children experiencing difficulties as part of the “Boucles du Cœur” campaign.
For all request about the Carrefour Group (sales, financial results, governance, international,…), please contact the Carrefour Group media relations office:
. By phone:
Switchboard: +33 (0)1 41 04 26 00
For journalists: +33 (0)1 41 04 26 17
. By e-mail: presse_groupe@
Source: Carrefour Group
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