Kraft 2001 Annual Report Download - page 64

Kraft Foods Inc.
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Our business is built on innovation—a passion to find creative
solutions to people’s needs. We try to bring that same spirit to
our relationship with society.
While we contribute more than $25 million annually in food and
financial support to nonprofit organizations around the world, we
do more than simply provide a meal or write a check. Through
Kraft Cares, our community outreach program, we join with the
organizations we support to help solve the structural problems
that stand in the way of greater effectiveness.
In our global efforts to help fight hunger, a good example of this
catalytic approach is the Kraft Community Nutrition Program.
Our goal is not only to help increase the quantity of food available
to food banks and other feeding organizations, but also to
significantly improve the nutritional quality of the food they provide.
Through the Fresh Produce Initiative, one of several initiatives
in the program, we’re helping the food bank network in the U.S.
dramatically increase the quantity of nutritious fresh fruits and
vegetables it provides to the people who need them most.
By helping the network build an infrastructure of refrigeration,
transportation, and food handling equipment, we’ve increased by
more than 400 million servings the annual volume of fresh fruits
and vegetables reaching the hungry. Similar programs in France
and Korea provide refrigerated trucks to the national food bank
networks and significantly increase the distribution of fresh foods.
Our Food Rescue Initiative equips feeding organizations with the
infrastructure to expand the distribution of prepared and perishable
foods collected from supermarkets, restaurants and cafeterias.
And our Seafood Initiative is helping to increase the amount of
nutritious seafood products reaching people in need.
We bring the same passion for innovation to our funding for arts
in education.
For children, exposure to the arts—both to the art of others and
to hands-on creative experience—builds more than a sense
of aesthetics. The arts can help develop critical thinking,
communication skills, team building and discipline, all of which
better enable students to meet the challenges of their core
curriculum. Kraft funds programs that increase the access of
children, especially at-risk children, to the visual and performing arts.
Kraft Cares: A Catalytic Approach to Community Partnerships
Our Art Discovery program, for example, helps enrich the
educational programming offered by arts organizations to
under-resourced schools in Chicago. And to reach an even
larger number of schools, we created the Art Discovery website
(www.artdiscovery.org). The site provides information to help schools
access a spectrum of educational resources offered by Chicago’s
extraordinary performing, visual and literary arts organizations.
In our funding to address the important issue of domestic violence,
we supported professional training for staff members of 120
domestic violence shelters in the Czech Republic. We’ve also
targeted longer-term solutions. Violence in the home often
interferes with job performance and can become a barrier to
employment. Yet survivors need to provide for themselves and their
children in order to reshape their lives. Kraft’s funding helped create
unique community partnerships that enable survivors to gain the
tools necessary to find and keep work. Women received supportive
services while training for new job opportunities. Through these
community-centered services, hundreds of women have found
hope for a better future.
Our involvement in addressing societal needs goes beyond
corporate action. Our commitment also comes alive in the hands
of our employees. With their contribution of time and financial
support, Kraft employees around the world make a difference in
the communities where they live and work.
Through the Kraft Employee Fund, the United Way and other
charitable programs, employees in 2001 donated more than
$4 million of their own funds in support of community-based
nonprofit organizations.
On Kraft Cares Day, more than a thousand employee volunteers
donate their time and expertise to do work—from painting schools
to delivering meals—in the places where people need it most. And
employees from around the company help tens of thousands of
students build a future through Junior Achievement. In fact, Kraft’s
2,000 volunteers make up Junior Achievement’s largest corporate
team in the U.S.
Finally, we continue our long-standing commitment to helping those
who are confronted with the hardship of natural disasters or other
crisis situations. In partnership with disaster-relief organizations,
we regularly provide ready-to-eat food products and much-needed
supplies to disaster victims and emergency workers alike. For
example, Kraft worked quickly to get emergency survival kits to
earthquake victims in Peru. Within hours of the tragic events
of September 11, Kraft was making arrangements to rush
14 truckloads of food to New York and Washington.
Whether it’s through corporate support, employee involvement
or disaster relief, all of us at Kraft want to help find innovative
solutions to society’s most pressing needs.