Blog BNP Paribas | The bank for a changing world

Economic solidarity: help for micro enterprises

Committed to promoting microfinance since 1993, BNP Paribas has recently taken a stake in FinanCités (part of the PlaNet Finance group, an international organisation that aims to fight poverty worldwide through the support and development of microfinance).
Founded in 2007, FinanCités is a socially responsible venture capital company whose purpose is to support local micro enterprises [...]

Enterprise for a Fairer World

In November 2008 BNP Paribas Assurance published “Entreprendre pour un monde plus juste” [Enterprise for a Fairer World],  a book dedicated  to social entrepreneurship around the world.
What is social entrepreneurship?

 The idea behind social entrepreneurship is to provide specific, practical and original solutions to various economic, as well as social, problems.  This innovative concept, where the [...]

Bone disease research in Geneva

The BNP Paribas Suisse Foundation intends to reinforce its activities in the area of health, and in 2009 will be collaborating on a new project: a study being conducted by the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) on the principal causes of bone diseases.
Osteoporosis, a disease that causes brittle bones, develops insidiously as the years go [...]

“My best drawing SOS Village" contest in Tunisia

In the framework of its social responsibility program, UBCI, BNP Paribas’s subsidiary in Tunisia, sponsored for a second year in a row the competition “My best drawing SOS Village”. The participants were children (age 6 to 12) from the orphanages of the three SOS Villages Gammarth, Silianaand, and Mahrèsshelters.
 
The Tunisian branch of SOS Villages, is [...]

Micro-finance withstands the crisis

The World Bank gathered some sixty specialists in Paris at the beginning of 2009, to discuss the financial crisis. BNP Paribas, a keen observer of micro-finance, also attended.
The general impression of the meeting was that the clouds looming on the horizon for micro-finance are in no way comparable to the cataclysm now affecting high finance. [...]

Community jumble sales for families in need

As part of its Project Banlieues (Suburbs Project), the BNP Paribas Foundation is supporting the “Aide aux Vacances des Jeunes” association [AVJ] which awards grants to finance holidays of young people whose families cannot afford it.
To finance these grants, AVJ collects cast-offs and other used items from the local population, and organises large jumble sales.
Michel [...]

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach him how to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime

BNP Paribas Foundation in the framework of its “Helping Hand“ initiative supports the association “Avenir par l’École” [A Future through School] . Daniel Richard, its founder and president, also an employee of BNP Paribas Switzerland, tells us about it.

Could you describe your project to us?
The association was created in order to offer children in Burkina [...]

Vision impaired people can now access a museum in Athens

BNP Paribas in Greece participated in the creation of a special program, designed to assist vision impaired people to visit the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens. First of its kind in Greece, the initiative provides a tactile tour for the permanent collections of the museum.  The visitors are given the opportunity to  perceive the [...]

First Impressions from Carpooling

With more than 11,000 visitors per day, the French website www.ecovoiturage.pro spreads the word about carpooling among its BNP Paribas employees.  Currently there are 1,283 members and 1,088 routes. The first impressions are promising.
Here are some of the stories:

Philippe MATHIEU, of the International Operations Department:
 ”I’ve been doing  carpooling for about two months now, and I want to stress that the [...]