Aviva 2009 Annual Report Download - page 72

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Aviva plc Corporate responsibility continued
Annual Report and Accounts 2009
Top 50 list in 2009 and featured in Cranfield University’s study
of women in the boardroom. Our chief marketing officer,
Amanda Mackenzie, was named in The Female FTSE Report as
one of 100 Women to Watch in 2009. Our employee groups,
including the Aviva Women’s Network and Pride Aviva, are
firmly established. They have evolved from small beginnings
to become thriving networks, hosting events and contributing
support for local community projects. This year, we significantly
improved our position in Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index,
achieving 54th position, compared to 78th in 2008. We are
the only insurer to be included by Stonewall in the top 100
employers in the UK, and Pride Aviva also received special
recognition as a ‘star performing employee network group’.
Community investment
As a responsible business, we are committed to helping address
challenges facing people and society. Globally, we invested
over £8.0 million in 2009 (
2008: £9.6 million ), in line with our
strategic focus to support community and charitable initiatives
in education, life trauma and financial literacy. We encourage
employee volunteering in support of these areas as part of
personal development and our people can apply for up to three
paid volunteering days per year. Nearly 9,000 staff took up the
opportunity in 2009, resulting in a total of 79,900 volunteering
hours, an increase of 18% on 2008 (67,700 hours). We report
the impacts of our activities against the London Benchmarking
Group model and have developed tools to help our businesses
around the world capture information on the impact of their
investments in the communities they serve as well as employee
time and cash donations.
We continue to support humanitarian aid through our
Oxfam 365 partnership, which helps to equip Oxfam with the
resources and materials to respond to emergencies as soon as
they happen. Our employee groups also link up with Oxfam
to raise awareness of key issues and in March our Women’s
Network match-funded donations made by employees to
Oxfam’s ‘Yes We Can’ campaign. This was in support of
Oxfam’s work to change attitudes towards women in Nepal
and South Asia and create a fairer society.
In 2009 we launched ‘Street to School’, our five-year global
charitable initiative, which aims to get children and young
people off the street and into education. Working with leading
charities and experts, and supported by our employees and
customers, together we will champion the needs of street
children in the communities in which we live and work. ‘Street
to School’ has already been launched in the UK, Turkey and
India, and will gradually be adopted in every country in
which we operate, eventually accounting for 50% of our
charitable donations.
Here are just a few of the community activities we
supported this year:
‘Street to School’ in India
Aviva India has partnered with CRY (Child Rights and You) and
Save the Children in India to help over 50,000 street children
get access to education and training by 2012. To date, 70% of
staff have volunteered to donate a day’s salary to CRY, and in
November, 30 staff members took part in the Airtel Delhi Half
Marathon to raise funds for the charity. In partnership with the
Hindustan Times , Aviva India also held a five-day book donation
drive which resulted in 125,000 books donated by employees,
schools and members of the public. Save the Children will use
the books to help give 38,000 under- privileged children access
to education.
Economic citizenship education for teenagers
‘Paying for It’ (www.payingforit.org.uk) launched by Aviva in
2007, continued to take economic citizenship teaching into
schools up and down the country with the help of over 100
specially trained Aviva volunteers. Using specially tailored
resources available online for all schools to access, classes
address issues of financial and social importance, such as
housing, the environment and health.
The ‘Chance to be Chancellor’ competition was run
in conjunction with
The Times as part of the ‘Paying for It’
programme. It offers engaging activities to help young people
find out more about the current economic challenges facing the
country and act out the role of the Chancellor in delivering their
vision for the economy.
Aviva Canada’s Community Fund
The Aviva Community Fund gives members of the public the
opportunity to turn great ideas into action to benefit their
local communities. Launched in October, a unique website,
www.avivacommunityfund.org enables Canadians to register
their ideas with accompanying photos or video. Special outreach
efforts were made to raise awareness of the new fund to
charities and not-for-profit organisations and approximately
8,000 schools, colleges and universities were contacted across
the country. Through various forms of communication including
social media sites, the people who submitted the ideas
encouraged as many people as possible to vote for their idea.
More than 2,000 ideas were registered and an impartial panel
of judges awarded a total of $500,000 to eight winning entries,
announced in January 2010. From coast to coast, ideas ranged
from building playgrounds for children, driving awareness
of environmental programmes and providing services for
at-risk youth.
Taiwan typhoon
Typhoon Morakot, which hit Taiwan in August, resulted in over
400 deaths in the country. Aviva in Taiwan raised funds through
employee donations to World Vision and employees were given
up to two days leave to help those affected by the typhoon.
A dedicated helpline was established to speed up claims and
affected customers were offered a three-month deferral on
their premiums.
Podari Zhizn
Our people in Russia volunteered their time and money to
support Podari Zhizn, a charity that helps children suffering from
terminal illnesses. By funding the charity, instead of subscribing
to the tradition of buying gifts for clients during holiday periods,
the funds raised to date have provided a new ventilating system
of benefit to the children. Aviva Russia has also donated
computers to the foundation.
Environment
Today’s actions will affect future generations, and nowhere is
this more evident than in our approach to climate change and
the environment. Our established and proven strategy focuses
on controlling our own impacts and resources, including gas,
water, electricity and waste – and by pursuing this long-term
policy we have reduced our carbon emissions by a further 5.2%
this year. As an investor, we use our influence to encourage
others to make responsible choices and we promote good
environmental practice among our colleagues, customers
and suppliers.
On a like-for-like basis, in 2009, our total carbon emissions
fell by 5.2% across our global business, compared to a 6.6%
reduction in 2008. Overall, we achieved a group-wide reduction
in carbon emissions of 15% (
2008: 3.3%). This figure includes
energy consumption data from our business in Australia before