Swift Business Forum Romania 2019

Swift works with and for financial communities across the globe. We know this is a privilege as well as a responsibility, and we are committed to making a positive impact wherever we can.

We integrate social, environmental, ethical, and human rights concerns into our operational strategy, and strive to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our CSR programme covers several of them, and in particular SDG 1 No poverty, SDG 4 Quality Education and SDG 13 Climate Change.

Swift has been sponsoring charities while organising events since 2007, with a special focus on education and under-privileged children. In 2018, Pestalozzi Kinderdorf in Switzerland, Terre d'Hommes in the Netherlands, Changing Young Lives Foundation in Hong Kong, Code First: Girls in England, Save the Children in India and Invest in Girls in the US have been among our beneficiaries. Additionally, we have supported SOS Children’s Villages in China, Germany, Finland, India, Indonesia, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, United Arab Emirates and USA.

At Sibos 2018 in Sydney, we donated to the Girls and Boys brigade, helping children in need by providing education, recreation and activities that build life skills as a foundation for a brighter future. At this occasion, a donation was also made to the Australian Marine Conservation Society. 

At this Romania Business Forum, we are pleased to provide financial support to SOS Children’s Village Bucharest. In Bucharest, various groups of children including those with a Roma background and street children are particularly disadvantaged. With rising poverty and an increasing number of children losing parental care, SOS Children's Villages provides vital support to families with health advice and basic needs. SOS Children's Villages works closely with the families in the neighborhood so that they can stay together and that children have access to essential educational, health and nutritional services. The organisation also provides counselling for parents on legal and social issues. Children who can no longer live with their families, can find a loving home in one of the fifteen SOS families. The organisation also manages a “Playmobile Bus”, a mobile center that travels to public parks, hospitals, orphanages and where many disadvantaged children live. Children are encouraged to play imaginative and educational games, and they can take part in craft, dancing or theatre activities - the aim is to give children a chance to be children and to increase the confidence in themselves and in others around them. This programme is supported by Swift.

In line with Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 4, we believe that obtaining a quality education is the foundation to improving people’s lives and sustainable development. Amongst many initiatives, we support projects of the Teach for All network in Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Colombia, Ghana, and Nigeria, aiming at reducing education inequities through the development of transformational leadership programmes. Swift also supports education through the Student Scholarship Programme in South Africa and Nairobits Trust in Kenya, training less privileged young people in web design, IT and creative multimedia, helping them to enhance their employment and entrepreneurship opportunities.

We also contribute to financial education and inclusion initiatives as they are close to our business. Swift partners with Fundación Capital, to finance the development and launch of tablet-based financial education apps aimed at supporting young people and women in Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Mozambique, Tanzania and Vietnam. Additionally, we support the Mann Deshi Foundation in India by financing a business school for rural women, helping them develop the skills to manage their own small business and gain access to finance.
 

At Swift we also focus on Sustainable Development Goal 13 by caring for the environment. We implement measures aimed at reducing our cooperative’s carbon emissions, we focus on reducing waste in our offices; we use renewable energy wherever feasible and we compensate carbon emissions caused by work-related travel and events. Through our partnership with WeForest, we have planted 147,000 trees in countries such as Brazil, India and Tanzania. In 2019 we are planning to grow a Swift forest in Ethiopia in 2019. This NGO is devoted to reforestation of bio-diverse and indigenous forests in tropical countries while providing jobs for women and enabling them to send their children to school. 

We also strive to respond to needs arising from humanitarian emergencies and natural disasters through corporate donations, voluntary work and donation-matching campaigns. Last year we supported the victims of the tsunami and earthquake in Indonesia by matching staff donations to the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, Unicef USA and Mercy Malaysia. Swift also contributed to the fight against malaria in Congo by donating to Doctors without Borders. Our donation helped to heal over 17,000 children between 1 and 5 years old from malaria.
    
Employee engagement is one of our key priorities, with over 20% of staff actively engaged in various associations.