100 Percent - Employee Volunteering Award is Poland's first contest recognizing best corporate volunteering practices. This year's winner is Citi Handlowy, whose corporate volunteering project is managed by The Citi Handlowy Leopold Kronenberg Foundation. The bank collected the main prize in the category Corporate Volunteering Program and an honorary mention in Volunteering Event, for the collaborative project delivered with "Postcard" Culture Association.
We try to encourage employees to volunteer, continuously strive to make our projects better and introduce new innovative solutions. This award is proof positive that we are moving in the right direction. We receive similar feedback from our volunteers who readily join volunteering projects of this type. It should be noted that in a survey conducted by The Citi Handlowy Leopold Kronenberg Foundation among our volunteers, over a half declared volunteering regularly and 76% are motivated by the sheer will to help others, said Krzysztof Kaczmar, President of The Citi Handlowy Leopold Kronenberg Foundation, the organization coordinating Employee Volunteering Program at Citi Handlowy.
100 Percent - Employee Volunteering Award contest is modelled on European Employee Volunteering Award delivered in 24 countries under European Year of Volunteering 2011. In Poland, it is organized by the Volunteering Centre Association and its goal is to promote this type of activity among employers as well as employees. Citi Handlowy is this year's winner of Corporate Volunteering Program category and was recognized for a project conducted in collaboration with "Postcard" Culture Association. The project involved Citi Handlowy volunteers providing free legal counselling sessions to 30 members of Policzna local community during their off-site team-building trip. Some volunteers also worked on wood-carving and assembly of period ornaments on the walls of Creative Arts Centre in Policzna, managed by "Postcard" Association. The Policzna project is a perfect example of effective cooperation of people representing diverse communities: local residents, cultural institutions, public administration, bank employees, and artists.
Employee Volunteering Program at Citi Handlowy was launched in 2005. Over seven years of its existence it produced 1042 projects, with volunteers donating over 75,500 hours in 12,000 volunteering engagements, working for nearly 140,000 beneficiaries. According to surveys conducted by The Citi Handlowy Leopold Kronenberg Foundation, the most popular choice of project type is working for children but Citi Handlowy volunteers practice also different forms of giving. One in three donates 1 percent of their income tax to community organizations and over a half donate food. Donating blood is also popular among Citi Handlowy volunteers.
