Volunteerism

Community Partnership Day

The Novartis Community Partnership Day, held in April each year to commemorate the month in which Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy merged to form Novartis in 1996, provides an opportunity for our people around the world to make a difference in their local community, expressing their own individual commitment to corporate citizenship.

The initiative is aimed at supporting local communities, social institutions and non-profit organizations with projects compatible with our commitment to social responsibility.

The work during Community Partnership Day is normally accomplished collectively outside the office and leads to personal contacts in the community. The activities make a meaningful contribution in an emotional or technical sense. In the context of these activities, people become more aware of the challenges of unusual life circumstances.

Activities have included renovating schools, accompanying children with disabilities on day-trips, working at food-donation banks, and using business skills to help local organizations improve their efficiency. In 2007, more than 10 000 associates took part in the Community Partnership Day. Here are some of the highlights:

• Bangladesh: Novartis partnered with a local nongovernmental organization called "The Dhaka Project" to support rehabilitated street children. Associates planted trees, did health checks and painted pots with children, and provided training for NGO workers.
• Germany: Novartis volunteers supported the redecoration of the exterior of a school. Together with children, associates painted a fence, created a school logo and repainted the signs outside the school. Other projects in Germany included cleaning up storm damage around a Botanical Garden caused by the severe winter storm "Kyril" in January 2007.
• Italy: the motto of this year's Partnership Day was “no-one excluded” to support people living in conditions of constraint and marginalization. Among the day's activities, Novartis associates visited inmates at a prison near Milan to demonstrate their commitment to overcome barriers and combat social exclusion.
• Spain: Novartis worked with the Ibn Battuta Association, an organization specializing in integrating people from the North Africa Maghreb zone. In different workshops, associates exchanged traditions, culture, music and dishes with the immigrants.
• Switzerland: More than 3 200 associates across Switzerland participated. In Basel, the headquarters of Novartis, associates worked on more than 140 projects, such as accompanying elderly people on different excursions or reconditioning playgrounds in the region. In Bern, associates planted reeds along the shores of the Lake Biel, built nests for ring snakes and reconditioned the dry stone walls in the vineyards. Associates in Nyon helped teenagers to find apprenticeships and gardened with handicapped people.
• US: associates supported local nonprofit organizations in various activities and assembled backpacks with school supplies for children with AIDS. Others gathered coats for homeless people and business clothing for low-income women seeking to re-enter the workforce.
• Venezuela: volunteer activities included maintaining emergency rooms in two public hospitals and the reconditioning of an orphanage.