Mercedes 2013 Annual Report Download - page 111

115
C | Combined Management Report | Sustainability
Science, technology and the environment. Daimler has been
helping environmental organizations conduct various projects
for several years now. For example, the Baden-Württemberg
chapter of the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union
of Germany (NABU) cooperated with Daimler to launch a marsh
renaturation project in 2012. Almost all of the marshes in
Baden-Württemberg have been drained and severely damaged
in past centuries, but the partners aim to restore two of them.
This project will benefit many threatened plant and animal species
as well as the climate in general.
Education and traffic safety. Our MobileKids program has been
successfully promoting safety and the future of mobility since
2001. This initiative teaches schoolchildren about traffic safety
in a playful and engaging manner. The ideas and content of
MobileKids are also taught in other countries including China,
Turkey and Hungary. To date, the program has prepared
more than one million children worldwide to behave safely
in road traffic. w mobilekids.net
Improving access to education is one of the most long-lasting
investments benefiting society and also our company. That
is why we launched the Genius education initiative, which is
geared toward children and teenagers and combines various
educational projects focusing on future technologies, mobility
and environmental issues. We use age-appropriate programs
and free workshops to provide playful and practical instruction
outside a school setting. In conformity with the formal curric-
ulum, we have also developed instructional materials on science
and technology subjects. In this context, we offer teacher
conferences and training courses related to these materials.
w genius-community.com
Social responsibility
The main elements of our social involvement. Because
we consider business success to be inseparable from social
responsibility, we are working worldwide for the future of
our society in line with our values and local needs.
To promote social development, we spent more than €60 million
on donations to nonprofit institutions and sponsorships of
socially beneficial projects in 2013. Added to this are our founda-
tions and corporate volunteering activities, as well as self-
initiated projects.
We concentrate on areas that promote our role as a “good
neighbor” of the communities in which we operate worldwide.
We also focus on projects that can benefit from our core
areas of expertise as an automobile manufacturer as well as
our specific know-how. In particular, that includes projects
devoted to science, technology, the environment, education,
traffic safety, the arts and culture. We also support chari -
table projects, community projects and projects for promoting
social and political dialogue.
Transparency and control. The Board of Management’s
committee for donations and sponsorship controls all of the
company’s donations and sponsorship activities worldwide.
The committee bases its decisions on the donation and sponsor-
ship guidelines, which creates binding regulations for the
relevant criteria, legal stipulations and ethical standards.
We also create transparency with the help of our donation and
sponsorship database, which records all of the Group’s
donations and sponsorship activities worldwide. Regular com-
munication measures help employees to abide by the guide-
lines worldwide and make them aware of the risks associated
with donations and sponsorship activities.
Support for political parties. In 2013, we supported demo-
cratic parties solely in Germany, donating a total of €320,000
(2012: €435,000). Of this total, the CDU and SPD parties
each received €100,000 (2012: €150,000), and the FDP, the CSU,
and BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN each received €40,000
(2012: €45,000).
Funding through foundations. We support universities,
research institutes and interdisciplinary science projects
worldwide to promote sustained innovation and the international
sharing of ideas. We have combined these activities in our
foundations.
The Daimler and Benz Foundation is endowed with €125 million.
As a promoter of the knowledge society, the foundation
helps to fund the scientific development of research ideas
in the areas of environmental protection and technological
safety. It also funds a special team of mobility experts who study
the effects and socially relevant aspects of autonomous
driving. w daimler-benz-stiftung.de
Within the framework of the founders’ Association for German
Science, the Daimler Foundation is, among other things, involved
in selecting the winners of the German future Prize for Tech-
nology and Innovation. As part of MINTernational, the foundation
also supports young scientists at academic institutions and
helps to make universities more international.
w stifterverband.org
Donations and sponsoring in 2013
C.45
Charity/Community 38%
Arts & Culture 36%
Education 13%
Science/Technology/Environment 9%
Political Dialog 4%