Our local actions
WE GET INVOLVED EVERYWHERE WE DO BUSINESS
Our people are rolling up their sleeves and giving their time and money to worthy causes in dozens of intiatives in every part of the world.
EUROPE - AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST - LATIN AMERICA - NORTH AMERICA - ASIA-PACIFIC
EUROPE
France
In France, following the successful completion of a three-year program to integrate the disabled into our workforce in 2008, we are renewing our commitment with another three-year agreement. Under the terms of the initial Mission Handicap program with our trade unions, the company agreed to recruit about 60 disabled people at nearly two dozen sites in France over a 36-month period. Mission Handicap also undertook several initiatives to train and improve working conditions for disabled employees with an eye towards making it easier for disabled people not only to find jobs but to keep them. Over the course of the initial 36 months of Mission Handicap, we hired 67 disabled people in permanent jobs as well as six fixed-term contracts and 20 trainee contracts. At the time of writing of this report, the second phase of the program was awaiting official approval from government authorities.
Alcatel-Lucent joined with three major French multinational corporations to create Fondation Télécom in 2008, a foundation dedicated to supporting higher education. Fondation Telecom aims to raise 25 million euros over the next five years to finance initiatives in training, research, innovation and forecasting within French institutions of higher education.
In 2008, the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation continued its support for the Cercle Passeport Télécoms, a joint public/private partnership to help disadvantaged French youths gain access to top-rated schools and career paths.
Poland
The four dozen members of the volunteer Alcatel-Lucent Fire Brigade in Bydgoszcz donated blood and provided support for a local school in addition to their fire prevention and security duties.
Created in 1950, the brigade members also engage in numerous charities, especially those involving children. Our people in Poland donated generously to a local initiative designed to provide poor families with sorely needed shoes, clothes and school supplies. In Bydgoszcz, three dozen employees donated blood and collected toys and children’s books for the Polish Red Cross.
Spain
Hundreds of our people brought their families along to our site in Madrid one Sunday afternoon in December 2008 to support the Banco de Alimentos food drive. They contributed more than 400 kilograms of rice, lentils, chickpeas and canned goods for distribution among Madrid’s needy. We began helping Fundación Atapuerca advance understanding of human evolution through a sponsorship program launched in 2008 in Spain.
The foundation conducts research based on the remains of primitive humans in archaeological sites found in the caves of the Atapuerca mountain range, where the most ancient human remains in Europe have been discovered.
Germany
In Nuremberg, many of our people enthusiastically participated in the government’s Go to Work by Bike initiative. At our campus in Stuttgart, a dedicated bike access and parking area were installed.
Italy
In Italy, we continued our ongoing support for a non-profit group that helps care for children cancer victims. The Peter Pan association provides rooms within private houses to relatives of children hospitalized for cancer treatment. Alcatel-Lucent has been sponsoring one of these rooms since 2007.
UK
Seven of our executives spent one October night outside in sleeping bags to help raise funds and raise awareness of the plight of homeless children in the UK. The so-called Byte Night initiative provides support for Action for Children, a charity that offers help for disadvantaged youths. These include not only the homeless but also victims of poverty, disability and abuse.
AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST
Egypt
We are funding scholarships for top engineering students as part of our ongoing support for the Université Française d’Egypte, which we have sponsored since its creation in 2002. We also supplied funds for the construction of a state of the art auditorium. We have an ongoing partnership with Egypt’s Future Generation Foundation, which aims to enhance workforce performance through human resources development. We also support the American University in Cairo, where we have pledged five years of financial aid in 2006 to help the university build its new campus in New Cairo. We are discussing the possibility of collaborating with the Nile University, the country’s first university specialized in post graduate education and research. The discussions follow the creation of a joint committee of researchers and academics from Nile University and Bell Labs in 2007.
South Africa
We are partnering with South Africa’s Tshwane University of Technology to support teaching and research in telecommunications and signal processing. In 2008, we agreed to fund a permanent teaching chair at the university.
LATIN AMERICA
Brazil
Our teams in Brazil participated massively in the annual Alcatel-Lucent International Days of Caring. For example:
- Our people donated more than 65 kilograms of food and more than 10,000 euros to help the needy, along with 200 blankets
- Alcatel-Lucent employees gave paper and other material to be recycled in support of a reading incentive
- The members of our Rio de Janeiro choir performed at a health clinic for the elderly.
- We sponsored McHappy Day, a McDonald’s initiative that donates one day’s Big Mac sales to a group supporting young cancer victims, by purchasing 1500 lunch tickets for Sào Paulo school children.
In 2008, we maintained our support for the Ethos business organization, which promotes corporate social responsibility and sustainable development.
We continued our support for the LIDE-EDH Corporate Leaders Group-Executives for Human Development, coordinated by the Ayrton Senna Institute.
Mexico
In Mexico, Alcatel-Lucent people in Nogales played a leading role in the construction of the country’s first papercrete house. Papercrete bricks are made from a mixture of recycled paper, sand and concrete. Alcatel-Lucent volunteers actually helped make the bricks, which consisted in part of scrap paper donated by Alcatel-Lucent and several other so-called Maquiladoras export-only assembly plants in Mexico. In addition to the coordination work central to the project’s success, our people provided the stove, refrigerator and microwave for the new house’s kitchen.
NORTH AMERICA
The Alcatel-Lucent Foundation co-sponsored a three-month exhibit titled “RACE: Are We So Different?” in Jersey City, New Jersey in 2008. The exhibit at the Liberty Science Center combined the experiences of a multiracial society and the history of race as a social and scientific idea with contemporary scientific findings. Alcatel-Lucent has been among the Liberty Science Center’s corporate sponsors since its inception. Our employees, who enjoyed free admission, were encouraged to attend to see how the exhibit themes dovetailed nicely with portions of our Statement of Business Principles. We continued our sponsorship of a breast cancer survivor program in Texas as well as our support for the north Texas affiliate of the organization behind it, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation. In 2008, as in past years, our people participated actively in the foot race that helps provide funds for breast cancer awareness, education, treatment, screening efforts and research grants.
ASIA-PACIFIC
China
Within weeks after an earthquake jolted Sichuan province in south-western China in May 2008, more than 100 Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell engineers were working on site on disaster relief and network recovery. Our people helped local operators connect thousands of lines of switching equipment, set up network access gateways and re-establish ADSL service. The company dispatched 100 tons of telecom equipment immediately after the earthquake to support communications needs in earthquake-stricken areas. In addition to the relief fund from the Foundation, Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell and its employees donated over 1 million euro in cash and goods, such as infant and health supplies to help the earthquake victims.
More than three dozen of our people volunteered to support Shanghai Roots & Shoots, an environmental group with a particular focus on educating the young. As part of a government program to eliminate the proliferation of plastic bags, our people helped Roots & Shoots distribute reusable bags to middle school pupils in Shanghai.
As part of our support for energy conservation efforts in China, we supported the World Wildlife Foundation’s 20/20 campaign. Highlighting 20 ways to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent, a WWF brochure was made available via the Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell intranet. Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell moved into China’s top 20 Corporate Social Responsibility leaders as ranked by the influential Southern Weekly newspaper. The CSR award, in which more than 3,000 companies compete for recognition, measures such criteria as the quality of products and services, environmental protection efforts, employee benefits, and philanthropy.
India
From donating blood and planting trees to improving road safety and helping the destitute, our people in Chennai, India enthusiastically supported Corporate Social Responsibility Week with a range of projects and programs. Joining forces within WELCOM, the Welfare Committee of Alcatel-Lucent Chennai, our employees have pledged to focus on rural development by identifying and extending support to destitute families in and around Chennai.
The Alcatel-Lucent Foundation provided substantial support for QUEST (Quality Education and Skills Training) in India in 2008. A youth organization that partners with leading non-profits such as the Azim Premji Foundation, Pratham and CAP Foundation, QUEST focuses on two main groups: for more then 12,000 children ages 6-14, QUEST helps improve the quality of elementary education; for some 4,000 young people aged 12-to-21, it uses computer-assisted-learning to provide life skills education, career exploration, and employability skills. In 2008, QUEST helped youth in 23 elementary schools and 10 computer-assisted vocational/pre-vocational centers. All of the group’s projects have become self-sustaining; their future assured thanks to ongoing community support and other resources.
Australia & New Zealand
Our teams established several new relationships with the science and technology community in 2008, including the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia and New Zealand’s national Te Papa museum.
As part of the partnership with Te Papa, we sponsored a colossal squid exhibit, attended by some 600 of our people and their families at a special company-sponsored evening. In Sydney, we partnered with the Powerhouse Museum to sponsor its Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit. Again, a special visit was organized for our people and their families. The partnership includes Alcatel-Lucent working with the museum to develop science related material for students and teachers, along with online content for Powerhouse audiences. Over 200 senior science students and their teachers attended a Fibre Optics workshop co-designed and facilitated by Alcatel-Lucent engineering graduates and the Powerhouse Museum staff.
