Moving more together

This year’s Social Engagement Days focused on support for Ukraine and, like last year, took place in cooperation with Bürger-Helfen-Bürger e.V. Hamburg. Among many other initiatives, the association has taken on the task of renovating a building in the city that has been idle for years so that it can serve as a temporary shelter for people, especially families with children from Ukraine. This is a project that many esomies were eager to support. In spring, two teams of ten colleagues restored the former school building with its adjoining dormitory. Over the two days, they cleared out, cleaned, painted, and spruced up the large garden area. In addition to these tangible activities, a fundraising campaign was launched in March to provide financial support for the people in Ukraine. 50% of the money collected was spent to Aktion Deutschland Hilft and 50% to UN refugee aid.

Another initiative launched this summer was a call for voluntary blood donations. Several Hamburg colleagues met at the office on June 25 to participate in a nearby Red Cross blood drive. Other esomies, who were, unfortunately, unable to participate in the campaign for time or local reasons, visited blood donation centers in their area on their initiative.

The cold season and Christmas also always inspire esomies to get into action. For example, Belgrade colleagues supported the Solidarity Kitchen in December last year with self-prepared meals. The Solidarity Kitchen is a Serbian organization that has set itself the task of fighting hunger and poverty with solidarity and voluntary help. A total of nine colleagues got together in the office kitchen on Christmas Eve 2021 to cook together and put together food packages. The menu included the Serbian national dishes Pasulj and Moussaka as well as salads and cakes. The food packages were then picked up by a driver of the organization and distributed to socially disadvantaged families without income in the city.

Furthermore, the clothing and material donation campaign of 2020 is currently repeated to support the Hanseatic Help association in making the lives of needy people in and around Hamburg a little better and more manageable.

Next year, esome social responsibility is to be considered even more holistically. An initiative has already been launched to measure our company’s sustainability in figures. Inspired by various approaches from the business world, including our parent company, P7S1, we want to build on the status quo and take concrete initiatives for improvement to bring about lasting positive change.