This year, for each corporate calendar distributed to its customers, the Iberchem Group donated €1 to the NGO SOS Children’s Villages to support children in special need as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. More specifically, within the basic post-COVID action package created by the NGO, Iberchem’s donation was dedicated to a specific project aiming at reducing the educational and digital divide, called “Ending the educational and digital divide: Educational support and reinforcement post-COVID”.  Children selected for this programme were given professional support to monitor their lessons and homework and to defray device costs and electricity for study.

According to SOS Children’s Villages, the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak will cause half a million children to join the list of minors at risk of exclusion or poverty in Spain. In 2021, the NGO launched a series of extraordinary measures programmes to cover the most urgent needs resulting from the pandemic among families and children at risk of exclusion.

Iberchem’s objective to reduce the educational and digital divide

“Equal access to education is a pillar of our sustainability programme,” said Guillaume Audy, Director of Sustainability at Iberchem. “Education is necessary to help future generations understand the sustainability challenges we are facing. With schools and education centres making increasing use of new technologies in their programmes, the digital divide among children is becoming an increasingly important sustainability challenge. We couldn’t think of a better partner to address this issue than SOS Children’s Villages. Their international presence and dedicated team make them the perfect NGO to address this problem.”

In 2019, the Iberchem Group also carried out a project in Ethiopia in collaboration with SOS Children’s Villages Spain (Aldeas Infantiles SOS). Through this partnership, the company improved access to clean water for the population of Kefalo following floods in the region. The Group provided more than 4,000 people with drinking water by distributing Sawyer water filters to nearly 700 households.

Perfumer María Fructuoso also carried out several workshops on the sense of smell at some of the SOS Children’s Villages daycare centres in Spain. This activity allowed the company to collaborate with local communities and help children learn science in a fun way.