BMW celebrates successful social responsibility efforts
By paying close attention to needs and social issues within Chinese society, German auto giant BMW has made great corporate social responsibility efforts over the past 15 years, stimulating the automaker to continue to give back to Chinese society in the future, especially in terms of caring children in the country.
The 2019 BMW Corporate Social Responsibility Forum was held in Beijing on Wednesday, marking the 10th anniversary of the China Charity Federation-BMW Warm Heart Fund and the 15th anniversary of the BMW Children’s Traffic Safety Education program.
“Today, we celebrate the 15th anniversary of our corporate social responsibility project in China. As a responsible company and pioneer of future mobility, the BMW Group has been innovating excellent products and pursuing sustainable development,” said Jochen Goller, president and CEO of BMW Group Region China, at the forum.
His words were echoed by Johann Wieland, president and CEO of BMW Brilliance Automotive Ltd, who said that over 15 years, BMW Brilliance has put down strong roots in China, achieved extraordinary development and created shared value in the country.
“For us, success is also about creating shared value and having a positive effect on Chinese society. Contributing to local supply chains and economic development is much more impactful than simply moving production to China and selling cars in China,” Wieland added.
The BMW Children’s Traffic Safety Education program, initiated by the automaker in 2005, has developed and evolved into a public welfare advocacy project entrenched in Chinese communities and schools, which had traveled 68 cities in 20 provinces and benefited more than 100 million people as of the end of 2018.
With innovative teaching approaches, the CTSE fills the vacancy of traffic safety lessons in China’s existing school and family education.
Last September, BMW initiated a traffic-conducting lesson in Shenyang, Northeast China’s Liaoning province. With more than 1,300 participants taking part, the lesson is recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest such event.
Most of the participants of the lesson were pupils from local primary schools in Shenyang.
In addition, with the guidance and engagement of BMW, its dealers, customers and associates are actively involved in the CTSE program.
In 2018, by training BMW’s dealers, customers and associates with professional traffic safety knowledge, the CTSE aimed to mould them into “BMW CTSE ambassadors”, who would carry out scientific and regular traffic safety education activities in schools and communities nationwide.
In March 2019, the first CTSE Ambassador Training Base was established at one of the automaker’s dealerships in Changsha, capital city of Hunan province. So far, the base has organized six training activities, engaging some 60 customer volunteers and benefiting 2.23 million teachers and children via online and offline communications, according to BMW.
Following up the efforts made by the CTSE, BMW announced at the forum that it is scheduled to launch the first Children’s Traffic Safety Education Guide in China.
The guide aims to provide children’s traffic safety education and voluntary services, as well as practical guidance for voluntary services.
The automaker hopes that the guide will promote the standardization of the voluntary services for children’s traffic safety education.
The China Charity FederationBMW Warm Heart Fund was founded in 2008, and has involved more and more stakeholders of BMW, including its dealers, customers and associates, to help improve local communities and contribute to a better society. It’s a milestone for BMW, witnessing that the automaker’s corporate social responsibility undertakings have engaged more stakeholders to create shared value for Chinese society.
As early as 2011, the fund launched the BMW JOY Home project, which is committed to offering care to leftbehind children in China.
In 2017, the BMW JOY Home project changed from being an endowment-oriented project to one aimed at developing skills. BMW set up 33 soccer teams and held 37 training sessions in different schools for 400 physical education teachers.
As of the end of last year, BMW had established 68 BMW JOY Homes in 29 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China, benefiting more than 80,000 left-behind children.
According to the automaker, by the end of 2018, more than 250 BMW dealers and 88,000 BMW customers and employees had participated in various public welfare activities, benefiting more than 171,600 people in total.
Looking ahead, the China Charity Federation-BMW Warm Heart Fund is working on the Joyful Sports Guide, designed especially for rural teachers and social volunteers, and contains 30 demonstration videos of joyful sports lessons to help them develop appropriate sports games for children. The guidebook is expected to be widely used by public volunteers for relevant social welfare activities.