Tesco Corporate Responsibility Review 2005

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Communities

Charitable giving

Tesco has been a member of Business in the Community’s Per Cent Club for over 15 years. We give at least 1% of our pre-tax profits to charity in the form of donations, employee time and gifts in kind. This year, the total value of our charitable contribution was £21,762,931.

Charitable giving 2005 by type
Donations £10,936,087
Gifts in kind £3,250,391
Staff time £6,219,189
Management costs £1,357,264
Total contributions £21,762,931

The Tesco Charity Trust made cash grants of £878,556 to local and national charities in the UK. The Charity Trust Community Award Scheme awarded grants totalling £420,000 to local projects. These provide practical benefits in the local community for three vulnerable groups: children, the elderly and those with disabilities.

For information on Community Awards visit www.tesco.com/corporate

Tesco Company Secretary, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, with David Praill, Help the Hospices and Gordon Lischman, Age Concern

Tesco Company Secretary, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, with David Praill, Help the Hospices and Gordon Lischman, Age Concern.

Charity of the Year

Through Tesco Charity of the Year, we aim to combine the strengths of a great charitable cause with the contribution that Tesco can uniquely bring – our 250,000 staff and over 15 million customers up and down the country. Together we pool our strengths to achieve something more powerful than we can achieve alone.

We aim to choose a charity which is close to the hearts of our staff and customers, works locally in the communities we serve and is focused on delivering practical benefits. The Charity of the Year becomes the main focus for staff fundraising and receives a 20% top-up from the Tesco Charity Trust.

In 2004 staff raised an estimated £3 million for Help the Hospices, our Charity of the Year.

Our 2005 Charity of the Year is Age Concern. Our aim is to help combat social isolation and poverty among older people.

Tesco businesses in Ireland, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary also support a ‘Charity of the Year’, raising £670,000, £7,500, £32,000 and £15,000 respectively last year.

‘Tesco staff across the UK took part in an amazing variety of activities in support of their local hospice. The company joined in with our national campaigns and promoted our work. A great year and a great partnership.’
Steve Razzell, Partnership Manager, Help the Hospices.

Race for Life

Photograph provided by Southern Daily Echo

Race for Life

In 2004, over 409,000 women took part in Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life, raising over £20 million. Tesco gave £250,000 to sponsor this five-kilometre event, paid the registration fees of our 18,752 staff who took part, and topped up all funds raised by our staff by 20%. Since our involvement started in 2002, over £52 million has been raised, and this year we won the Marketing Society’s Cause Related Marketing award. We are committed to sponsoring the event for a further three years and we hope that in 2005 425,000 women, including 20,000 Tesco staff, will help raise £23 million. Over the next year we will be extending our sponsorship of Race for Life to include a series of 10-kilometre races for men and women.

Supporting education

As the largest private-sector employer in the UK, we have a responsibility to contribute to the capabilities of tomorrow’s workforce. Education is one of the key areas where customers believe our support is very important, and where we can make a real difference. Our education initiatives focus on providing practical benefits for local communities. For example, Tesco is partnering I CAN, a UK charity that helps children with speech and language difficulties, to sponsor the Chatterbox Challenge. Children across the UK choose a rhyme, song or story and family and friends sponsor them to perform it aloud. This year, Chatterbox Challenge raised over £150,000 for I CAN.

Computers for Schools

Now in its 14th year, our Computers for Schools programme is the largest of its kind in the UK – over 29,000 schools are registered to take part. This year we carried out six two-day workshops in stores around the UK to increase awareness of the scheme and show parents that computers can be both fun and educational. This year, 2,700 computers and over 86,000 items of related equipment worth over £8 million were ordered by UK schools. This brings the overall total value of equipment given to schools since 1992 to £92 million. Next year, we aim to reach £100 million.

This year in Poland, our ‘Tesco for Schools’ scheme gave equipment worth £225,000 to 156 schools.

Learn to Give

In Korea we hold ‘Learn to Give’ days in the Cultural Centres in our stores.

International education

Education also provides the focus for much of our community activities in our international operations.

For example:

  • In Turkey, our Tesco Kipa stores have held first aid training sessions in stores and schools. These have been attended by 25,000 children and adults since 2002. We plan to train another 5,000 people this year. We have also held parenting sessions for 1,200 customers, focusing on parent-child communication, attention problems and hyperactivity;
  • In Korea there is a Cultural Centre in every store. These centres are used for a wide variety of activities including ‘Learn to Give’ training, held in partnership with the Beautiful Foundation. Last year around 100 parents and children attended this training, which aims to encourage a culture of giving;
  • In Thailand, we have set up 250 scholarships and funded training for retail undergraduates. At the Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University we also sponsored the development of a one-year diploma in retail business. Each time a Tesco Lotus Value store opens we set up 50 scholarships for high school students from deprived backgrounds. So far 300 scholarships have been awarded in six provinces.