2010 marked several natural disasters, impacting Bekaert operations in Chile, Indonesia and China.
When Bekaert learned that employees and their families were affected in Chile, we set up a global solidarity campaign “Today I work for my colleagues in Chile”, a call for all Bekaert employees and entities worldwide to donate the equivalent of one or more hours’ salary to help the Bekaert earthquake victims. The initiative to help finance the reconstruction and refurbishing of the employees’ houses was later expanded to support Indonesian colleagues affected by the devastating floods in the Karawang area. Thanks to the massive response of the Bekaert community, € 274 772 was collected, an amount that was doubled by Bekaert at the corporate level to a round figure of € 550 000. This fantastic result perfectly illustrates that better together are words we put into practice when our colleagues are in need. With the collected funds we were able to cover the costs of reconstructing and refurbishing the affected employees’ houses. Watch the personal account of some Bekaert employees in Chile.
After Qinghai Province in China was hit by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake on 14 April 2010, Bekaert initiated an employee donation program to support the disaster relief efforts for victims in the Yushu county. Over 7 900 Bekaert employees in China made a donation, totaling an amount of CNY 487 759. The money raised in Bekaert's plants in Jiangyin, Shenyang, Weihai, Wuxi, Suzhou, Chongqing, Huizhou and Shanghai was doubled by Bekaert at the regional corporate level to reach the round figure of CNY 1 million. The donations were made available for the disaster relief program of the Yushu victims via the China Red Cross organization.