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30 May 2017, 00:00h
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min read
SUSTAINABILITY
Cataluña
BARCELONA
GAVI Alliance, backing business CSR
Vacunacion
Vacunacion
"If we had to choose a single figure that demonstrated how life has changed for those most in need, it would be 122 million, the number of children's lives that have been saved since 1990." This was the hard-hitting comment from Bill Gates in February when delivering his annual message alongside his wife, Melinda Gates.
The joint founder of Microsoft has not only demonstrated that he is one of the most ingenious businessmen in history, but both Bill and Melinda Gates are major philanthropists, defenders of los human rights and humanitarian aid and presidents of the largest private charity association in the world, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
"Do you want to know which investment [in health] generates the greatest savings? Vaccines. Cover for basic child vaccinations is now at the highest levels ever recorded, reaching 86%," stated Melinda.
This was the idea that led them to associate with governments and companies in 2000 to form GAVI Alliance the Vaccine Alliance. This is an international public-private organisation intending to save children's lives and protect the health of the worldwide population by increasing access to vaccination in the poorest countries.
For the last 9 years, the ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation has been committed to GAVI Alliance. It was in 2008 when it joined the initiative by creating the Business Alliance for Child Vaccination, that channels contributions from Spanish companies and individuals in favour of child vaccination. At this point, the entity became the top private European partner of this organization.
At the start of this month, it renewed its commitment to GAVI Alliance and signed an agreement to contribute one million additional Euros to immunising thousands of children that live in developing countries.
Results achieved by CaixaBank
Since CaixaBank got involved in this project in 2008, more than 4 million children have received the pentavalent vaccine and the pneumococcal vaccine and more than 1,000 companies have joined the initiative. "It is a social commitment that forms part of our daily work and basically comes down to working for people's health. This DNA is what we commit each day to health and it fits in perfectly with this initiative," according to the private hospital group, HM Hospitales, one of the Spanish companies that has joined the cause.
The Alliance for Vaccines promotes a pioneering formula to promote Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Europe. The ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation encourages its customers, both companies and individuals to join this project as part of their CSR social actions.
All in all, this programme is a great opportunity for companies to contribute actively to health in the worldwide population. "Our social responsibility initiatives are focussed on strengthening programmes that allow us to improve what we do best, curing people," explains the team from HM Hospitales.
On the other hand, Carlos Javier Llorens, Managing Director of Predomar (another company that has joined the project), considers that CSR actions like this are very important for a company's strategy and invites other companies to join the initiative. To make it possible, CaixaBank is making its entire network of offices and Business Bank and Private Bank centres available to the programme and is promoting it at different events run by the entity such as the Coffee Breaks and at conferences and fairs such as BizBarcelona.
In addition, members of GAVI Alliance are given an emblem and a diploma to accredit their commitment to this health initiative. There are three sponsorship categories: Silver, Gold and Platinum (with contributions from 1,000 Euro).
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation calculates that every Euro invested in child vaccination has a return of 16 Euro. "This calculation includes the money that families would lose when a child gets sick and one of the parents has to stop work to look after them," explains Bill.
Formula for success
CaixaBank's total collection comes to 23 million Euros thanks to a pioneering fund collecting initiative in Europe: the Matching Fund. The formula consists of 1=4, in this way, the donations received are multiplied by 4. How? For each Euro donated by a company, the ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation gives another and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation adds another two Euros.
This collection system was so successful that last year the European Commission acknowledged the business alliance within the framework of the European Development Sessions due to the effectiveness of their fund collecting.
