153 GRI Index and Assurance statement Engaged citizen Fair partner Responsible banker Human Capacity Report Sustainability management Overview Foreword Corporate volunteering in the RZB Group The various corporate volunteering initiatives help to make the group feel part of a bigger picture, to support the Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen’s idea of helping others to help themselves and to proactively live up to our social responsibility together and within society. The involvement of the employees of RZB AG and RBI AG with “Haus Roshan” takes place within the framework of corporate volunteering, but also to a large extent during the employees’ free time, and deserves our high regard. The cooperation with Caritas aims at successfully integrating unaccompanied minor refugees in Austria through a personal mentoring program. This partner-like involvement was honored with a nomination at TRIGOS 2016. The H. Stepic CEE Charity also makes an essential contribution to improving the livelihoods of people in the CEE region. In order to prove the success of their initiatives in figures, network bank Raiffeisen Bank S.A. in Romania has for some time now been tracking its corporate volunteering measures in accordance with the London Benchmarking Group Standard. Corporate volunteering at the Vienna sites The corporate volunteering program was expanded in 2016 with two new financial education programs and now encompasses five projects altogether. The dramatic refugee situation in the middle of 2015 also served as impetus for further promoting the social commitment of RZB AG and RBI AG with a comprehensive corporate volunteering policy. This will hopefully remove the hurdles employees face and at the same time encourage them to use their skills and commitment in the selected areas. The sense of meaning fostered in this way among individuals strengthens society as a whole over the long term. Since the publication of the Corporate Volunteering Guidelines in the autumn of 2015, the employees can use up to two special vacation days per year for social commitment within the framework of the offered projects. While developing the corporate volunteering approach, both activities and competence projects were included in the program and the underlying conditions were defined. The projects offered focus on the one hand on migration/integration into Austria, along with the opportunity of becoming involved in the H. Stepic CEE Charity in order to support those people in whose countries we are also commercially involved, and on the other – with regard to our business activities – to focus on financial education as well. In the area of integration, close cooperation is maintained with Caritas at “Haus Roshan” in Breitenfurt (Lower Austria), which was home to 48 refugees in 2015, including 24 unaccompanied minors. The financing of the living containers for the children was initially provided via contributions by RZB AG and RBI AG as well as their management board members and employees. The goal of all of the measures is to support young people with their integration into Austria. From the very beginning, these included help with learning the language, providing a wide range of activities as well as teaching local values. Contact began with regular activities in order to get to know each other better while playing a sport, painting © RBI AG or cooking. The support is continuously being adapted according to needs, especially since the majority of the young people started school in September 2016. An important criterion for success is having employees act as learning mentors, which involves the youths having the possibility to come to RBI AG twice a week. In September, 26 youths from the Haus Roshan received the Austrian German Language Diploma (ÖSD) certificates A1 and A2 (the exams are conducted and evaluated according to a standardized examination system). Many of the employees
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