Tag Archives: Médecins Sans Frontières

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Inditex continues its support to Médecins Sans Frontières’ medical and humanitarian relief works with €2.3 million contribution

Inditex continues its support to Médecins Sans Frontières’ medical and humanitarian relief works with €2.3 million contribution

 

Arteixo, Spain, 2017-Nov-28 — /EPR Retail News/ —

  • Inditex has renewed its support for Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) work with Syrian refugees in the Turkish province of Kilis, on Syrian border, for the fifth consecutive year
  • Inditex’s support also extends to the Al Salamah Hospital in Aleppo, northern Syria.
  • The contribution to the two projects in this region totals €900,000
  • In addition, Inditex is funding medical care and a project to supply clean drinking water to refugees from the Rohingya community in Bangladesh, reaching around 120,000 refugees. Funds have also been earmarked to support the fight against acute malnutrition in children in Jharkhand, north-east India
  • Inditex is also reiterating its long-standing support for MSF’s Emergency Desk, financing its logistics and personnel in full through a €1 million contribution
  • Since 2008, Inditex has set aside over €21.5 million in support for MSF under the scope of their Framework Collaboration Agreement, which has directly benefitted more than 2.2 million people
  • Inditex is also reiterating its long-standing support for MSF’s Emergency Desk, financing its logistics and personnel in full through a €1 million contribution
  • Since 2008, Inditex has set aside over €21.5 million in support for MSF under the scope of their Framework Collaboration Agreement, which has directly benefitted more than 2.2 million people

Inditex has renewed its commitment to the medical and humanitarian relief work carried out by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) with Syrian refugees in the Turkish province of Kilis. It has also reiterated its long-standing support for the Emergency Desk operated from MSF’s headquarters in Spain.

Thanks to this agreement, and a total contribution of €2.3 million, Inditex’s support will also extend to the Al Salamah Hospital in the Azzaz district of the Syrian province of Aleppo. In addition, the agreement covers care for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and a programme for combatting acute malnutrition in children in India.

The agreement was signed by the chairman and CEO of Inditex, Pablo Isla, and the managing director of MSF Spain, Joan Tubau, at Inditex’s headquarters in Arteixo (La Coruña), at a ceremony also attended by the president of the medical-humanitarian organisation in Spain, David Noguera.

Projects in Turkey and Syria

Since it was set up in 2013, the Syrian refugee project in Kilis, Turkey, has become one of the leading initiatives in providing care to over 130,000 people who fled the war in their home country and are currently living in this province. In 2017, the MSF teams on the ground centred their efforts on providing mental health and psychosocial support to the refugee population affected by the scarcity of resources in the region.

Inditex has provided financial support to this project from the outset, along with aid for other initiatives designed to ease the consequences of the war in Syria. Under the new annual agreement, the Kilis refugee care programme will be given €500,000.

In addition, Inditex will provide €400,000 of financing to the Al Salamah Hospital in the Azzaz district in the province of Aleppo in northern Syria. The goal is to provide primary and secondary medical care – in the form of both emergency and regular outpatient care – to those suffering from chronic and severe illness among the 400,000 people living in the district.

MSF’s Al Salamah project has lent support to three hospitals and five health centres in Aleppo since 2012. For the last five years, the organisation’s efforts have focused on ensuring medical and surgical care; primary, paediatric and reproductive care; emergency relief; and assistance with food scarcity.

Support for the Emergency Desk

With the new annual agreement, Inditex has also renewed its financial support for the medical-humanitarian organisation’s Emergency Desk, earmarking €1 million this year. Part of this sum will be set aside to finance two of the Desk’s regional missions, specifically those in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

MSF’s Emergency Desk is responsible for monitoring and managing the emergency interventions carried out and overseen by the mission’s emergency response teams on the ground. This readiness capability has a team of experts both in the head office in Spain, largely funded by Inditex, and in different countries around the world, and specialises in humanitarian crises.

Support for this unit is therefore vital to enable emergency intervention by MSF around the world, so that it can carry out an essential component of its mission: saving lives.

Care for Rohingya refugees

The exodus of the Rohingya from Myanmar has emerged as a new challenge for the international community. Over 582,000 people have fled to Bangladesh since violence in the region intensified last August.

Given the current scale of this humanitarian crisis, Inditex’s €300,000 contribution will help fund two key activities that MSF has been working on to help the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh: the provision of medical care to adults, children and pregnant women; and access to drinking water and sanitation in Jamtoli, Hakimpara, Unchiparang and Putibunia. According to MSF’s calculations, the assistance provided to these refugee camps could reach around 120,000 people.

Combatting severe malnutrition in children in India

Over the last ten years, MSF has looked after over 17,000 children in India, in line with the international guidelines for community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM). MSF has recently set up a project to combat malnutrition in the West Singhbhum district of the state of Jharkhand.

The programme will run for three years – until the end of 2019 – and is intended for children aged six months to five years. The ultimate goal is to bring down the mortality rate and according to MSF’s calculations, this initiative will directly benefit 411 patients.

The project will also encompass the provision of training for local nurses and education about healthy habits to members of the local community. Inditex is providing a total of €100,000 to fund this initiative.

Inditex’s aid strategy for refugees and forced migrants

One of the cornerstones of Inditex’s community investment strategy is the provision of care to refugees and migrants forced to start a new life away from home.

To tackle this situation from a range of perspectives, in addition to its collaboration with MSF, Inditex is working on a series of initiatives with other non-profit entities, particularly in four different areas:

  • Clothing donations: throughout 2017, Inditex has donated more than half a million garments to these causes through entities such as the Red Cross, Caritas, ACCEM, CEAR and World Vision.
  • The On the Colombian Borders Programme, with Entreculturas and the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS): this initiative is aimed at providing opportunities and support for the people displaced by the armed conflict in Colombia in countries such as Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.
  • The EPGO Programme: the goal of this programme is to assist people in need of international protection. These include forced migrants in countries such as Mexico, and refugees who have had to abandon their home countries, including South Africa and Lebanon.
  • The Chair for Refugees and Forced Migrants with Comillas Pontifical University: the aim is to foster academic research into migration issues as well as a collaboration between the university and non-profit organisations.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Inditex

MSF is an international medical humanitarian organisation with a presence in over 70 countries and roughly 500 live projects underway. Its overriding mission is to assist populations in distress, victims of natural or man-made disasters and victims of armed conflict all around the world.

These annual collaboration agreements are part of the Framework Agreement signed by the two entities in 2008. This Framework Agreement has materialised in contributions of €21.5 million by Inditex to the work carried out by MSF in 35 countries, directly benefitting more than 2.2 million people.

Inditex’s partnership with MSF is part of the Group’s broader social investing strategy which encompasses a series of community initiatives carried out with a number of non-profit entities with expertise in the various projects’ respective spheres of geographic influence. Specifically, in 2016, Inditex invested €40 million in social initiatives, directly benefitting over 1.1 million people.

Detailed information about each project can be found here.

Contact:

Tlf: +34 981 185 400
Fax: +34 981 185 544
comunicacion@inditex.com

Source: Inditex

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Inditex allocates €9.7 million to aid Syrian refugees in Turkey through renewed partnerships with Médecins Sans Frontières and Caritas

Inditex allocates €9.7 million to aid Syrian refugees in Turkey through renewed partnerships with Médecins Sans Frontières and Caritas
Inditex allocates €9.7 million to aid Syrian refugees in Turkey through renewed partnerships with Médecins Sans Frontières and Caritas

 

Inditex is earmarking €1 million to MSF’s medical and humanitarian work with Syrian refugees in the Turkish province of Kilis along the border with Syria which it has been supporting consistently since 2013 

Arteixo, Spain, 2016-Nov-08 — /EPR Retail News/ — Inditex has renewed its collaboration agreements with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Caritas, allocating €9.7 million to several projects run by these non-governmental organisations. Inditex’s Chairman and CEO, Pablo Isla, signed the respective collaboration agreements at the company’s headquarters in Arteixo (La Coruña) in the presence of the president of MSF in Spain, David Noguera, and the president of Caritas Spain, Rafael del Río.

The MSF projects, to which the Group will contribute €2.3 million this year, are centred on the provision of humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees in Kilis (Turkey) and support for the mission’s emergency response teams in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. Caritas, meanwhile, will receive a €7.4 million contribution from Inditex between 2016 and 2018 for workplace integration programmes targeted at people at risk of social exclusion in Spain and community development programmes in Cambodia and Bangladesh.

Project in Kilis (Turkey) with MSF

Inditex will contribute a further €1 million to the medical and humanitarian assistance work of MSF to Syrian refugees in the Turkish province of Kilis.

Since it was set up in 2013, the Kilis project has been providing care to the more than 130,000 Syrian refugees fleeing their homes from war to the province’s urban and rural areas on the border between Turkey and Syria.

Over three-quarters of these refugees reside in precarious circumstances, outside of the Turkish refugee camps. Many are currently staying in Kilis, the first region of safety, and are largely undocumented. MSF is presently the only international humanitarian organisation that is providing  free healthcare to these refugees.

The €1 million in funding provided by Inditex will be used specifically to provide primary health care and psychological and pastoral support to the refugees in Kilis. This will include a programme of support-visits by MSF professionals to the displaced Syrians. In parallel, taskforces will be set up to address chronic disease, psychological requirements and health education focused on gender-based violence and providing treatment to refugees who suffered torture prior to fleeing from Syria.

Inditex has been consistently supporting this project and various other initiatives aimed at supporting the refugee crisis since its onset. In addition to its work at the border between Turkey and Syria, Inditex has provided financial support to the emergency units set up by MSF to assist Syrian refugees in their exodus towards Europe, as well as making in-kind donations via various humanitarian organisations.

Since Inditex and MSF signed a Framework Collaboration Agreement in 2008, the Group has contributed over €19.1 million to MSF to fund ongoing emergency relief work, as well as specific projects. These initiatives have benefitted more than 1.8 million people in 14 countries and in 28 emergency zones.

Support for the Emergency Desk

In addition, Inditex has pledged to renew its support to MSF’s Emergency Desk, with a further contribution of €1.3 million for this year.

MSF’s Emergency Desk is the unit responsible for monitoring and managing the mission’s emergency response teams on the ground. This emergency response unit, which is exclusively funded by Inditex, is staffed by expert professionals located in both MSF’s Spanish headquarters and in disaster zones.

Specifically, €500,000 will be allocated to the Emergency Desk at MSF’s Spanish headquarters and €400,000 each will be earmarked to the two mission emergency response teams in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. In both instances, these teams’ function is to provide expert training support and advice to the MSF units currently deployed in these African nations so that they are ready to respond in the event of an emergency.

The Caritas employment programme in Spain

Inditex will also contribute €5 million to Caritas’s employment programmes in Spain over the next three years. This will help fund workforce integration projects, self-employment initiatives, on-the-job training plans and rural community development projects.

The employment-focused collaboration between Caritas and Inditex in Spain dates back to 2011. Since then, the programme has established itself as a benchmark initiative in improving the job prospects and workplace integration of people at risk of social exclusion. Since 2011, Inditex has provided €6.5 million to this endeavour, which has directly benefitted more than 4,600 people. Over 3,500 of these beneficiaries have received training that has improved their job prospects and 1,450 have found their way back into the job market thanks to the integration programmes.

For the upcoming three-year period (2017 – 2019), the employment programme will receive another €5 million of funding from Inditex and is expected to support nearly 600 training initiatives for learning a new skill or enhancing existing ones, accompanied by work placements in many instances, with the aim of improving the percentage of beneficiaries who ultimately find work.

This programme also aspires to further foster the creation and consolidation of community development projects in areas such as tourism, graphic art, hospitality and organic farming sectors.

Community work in Bangladesh and Cambodia

Inditex and Caritas have also signed three-year agreements (covering 2016 – 2018) under which the company will allocate €2.4 million to the organisation’s community development programmes in Bangladesh and Cambodia.

The aim of these programmes is to improve rural community readiness for natural disasters in the case of Bangladesh and to extend the community health and development strategy already underway in the case of Cambodia. Since 2008, Inditex has contributed €4.3 million to these programmes, which have benefitted nearly 82,000 people.

In Bangladesh, the programmes, which will receive €1.5 million in new funding, aim to reinforce local community readiness for natural disasters, in a country prone to such catastrophes. Caritas has been working on disaster management for many years, evolving over time from an assistance-based approach to a prevention-based strategy which directly involves the local communities themselves. Specifically, the plan is to train the programme participants in risk management and to build flood shelters, enclosures to protect livestock, and dams and canals for combating drought.

Inditex will support initiatives aimed at improving living conditions in the least privileged communities of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital city. The initiatives target working women, as well as infants and teenagers. The aim is to raise parental awareness of antenatal and infant healthcare and improve the care provided to the children of female garment sector workers, ensuring access to schooling.

The Cambodian project, to be funded with €900,000, extends Caritas’s community health and development programme in rural areas in Cambodia, which has been supported by Inditex since 2008.

The beneficiaries of these projects are vulnerable families and individuals living in extreme poverty, AIDS patients and people with disabilities. The plan is to reinforce farming cooperatives, build health and maternity centres and promote pre- and post-natal care, among other initiatives.

Social investment at Inditex

Inditex’s partnerships with MSF and Caritas are part of the Group’s broader social investment strategy which supports a broad series of community initiatives carried out with a number of non-profits with expertise in the various areas and geographies. Against this backdrop, in 2015, Inditex invested more than €35 million in social initiatives which directly benefitted almost one million people.

For any press request please contact with:

Communication and Corporate Affairs Division
Edificio Inditex
Avda. de la Diputación s/n
15143 – Arteixo
A Coruña – ESPAÑA

Tlf: +34 981 185 400
Fax: +34 981 185 544
comunicacion@inditex.com

Source: Inditex

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