Friday, September 25th about 80 colleagues of the BNP Paribas Group in Germany exchanged their PC with hand tools and their suit with old clothes to go back to school and participate in the Malteser Social Day.

The Social Day is a humanitarian action organized by the Order of Malta Volunteers. The action has taken place already seven times in Frankfurt. This year it was expanded for the first time to other towns in Germany.

Set up similar to the Anglo-American “Days of caring”, companies are given the opportunity to engage in social projects during the Malteser Social Day. These could be projects hosted by the Malteser Organisation itself, by local communities or any other social institution. Companies do not provide financial support but allow each and every one of their employees to “physically” support these projects by allowing them to complete special projects outside of work. These teams are in charge of special projects which have yet to be accomplished due to problems such as missing resources or manpower.

In Frankfurt a joint team of volunteer employees from CIB (Corporate and Investment Banking), Securities Services and Asset Management went to a primary school to repaint and tile walls and doors, and to prepare the school garden for a new planting for the pupils. It was already the second consecutive year that volunteers worked for a day with the humanitarian organization. After the experience of last year, the team easily agreed to return to the same school.

Other affiliates in other German towns participated in this great experience to show corporate responsibility in their town and to show that this kind of action strengthens ties between teams. In Munich, colleagues from Arval and the CIB Leverage Finance Team built a joint team to repaint the hall of a special school.

Cardif sent 46 employees who took part in the project. They were split into four different projects. At the kindergarten Gartenäcker in Herrenberg, a team of 11 people was responsible for painting the whole interior of the building for one day. Thanks to the personal engagement of everyone, all rooms now glow in a new splendour. The management of the kindergarten is more than happy that their funds can now be put towards other projects.

The Rupert-Mayer kindergarten in Stuttgart Bad Cannstatt was also painted. However, the main focus of the voluntary work was on cleanup efforts. Apart from cleaning the whole school yard and the sandboxes, 11 employees also cleaned up the kids’ toys.

In addition, a clean up was done in the Neugereut Primary School in Stuttgart. It had been ages since somebody had done an overview of the groceries stored there. Cardif sent 12 employees to re-organize their three food storage rooms. At the same time they did some cleaning of the teaching materials, and also renewed the school yards’ decoration.

In the training centre in Stuttgart Weilimdorf, class rooms had to be totally re-done including painting, re-arranging the floor, adding interior doors and building closets. Moving towards the end of the day, the volunteers also helped build shelves and storage racks in the newly decorated rooms.

The Malteser Social Day represents a project initiated by people for people. This day prospers because of the individual engagement provided by each and every participant who brings with them their courage and personal will to make changes. Completing the tasks at the end of this exciting day, all participants were more than satisfied with their work and enjoyed being part of this group, and being able to help others.