Winning Three Awards in “2014 China Charity Festival” Makes NWDS an Industry Role Model
New World Department Store China Limited (“NWDS” or the “Company”; Hong Kong stock code: 825), one of the largest owners and operators of department stores in Mainland China, is pleased to announce that the Company has garnered the “China Charity – Group Award” for two consecutive years and won the honor of “Best Charity Project” again with its “@Dream Sustainable Development Program” (“@Dream Program”) in “China Charity Festival”. This year, the Company’s nationwide environmental activity, “Go Green with NWDS”, was awarded as the “Best Green Project”, making it one of the few companies with numerous awards and is considered a huge recognition to the width and depth of the Company’s CSR efforts.
Founded in 2011, China Charity Festival is jointly organized by thirty media agencies in China, including China News, China Finance Information, Baidu Gongyi and PR Newswire, which aims at promoting the spirit of charity, precise and complete interpretation of charity as well as cultivating a healthy charity culture. The Festival is the first event initiated by the media in relation to charity and has become one of the most influential charity events in Mainland China. Its judging committee selects outstanding charity projects based on five criteria – presentability, continuity, creativity, adaptability and integrity.
This is the second year for the Company to win “China Charity Festival” honors. NWDS has been actively undertaking corporate social responsibility and continues to deepen its work in the areas of charity, environmental protection, staff benefits and development throughout the years. For charity, the Company has launched “@Dream Program”, its nationwide sustainable development community project, since July 2013. With the four major themes, namely music, learning, sports and soul, diversified learning opportunities were provided to under-resourced children in Mainland China. In the previous year, the Company has further optimized the program and introduced numerous new activities such as “@Sports-Tennis Academy” tennis training program, “Sports- Soccer Dreams” activity and “@Soul – Distant Calls” charitable campaign, which has benefited over 3,500 children. Thus, the program was selected as the “Best Charity Project”. For environmental protection, the Company believes that Earth protection is everyone’s business and a dramatic change to the Earth can only be made by many tiny changes practiced in everyday life. Hence, echoing the United Nations’ “World Environment Day” on 5 June, the Company has organized “Go Green with NWDS”, a nationwide environmental activity, every June since 2011, encouraging staff and customers to demonstrate their green commitment by putting on green outfit to get green incentives, such as plants and reusable bags, successfully raising public environmental awareness and therefore, winning the award of “Best Green Project”.
“@Dream Program” and “Go Green with NWDS” are just some of NWDS’ sustainability activities. In line with the Festival’s annual theme this year, “Influencing China with Charity”, NWDS has organized a number of influential sustainability activities recently, for instance, “NWDS Sowers Action Challenging 12 Hours Charity Marathon 2014”, “Earth Hour” and “Green Mid-Autumn Festival – Moon Cake Box Recycling Campaign”, and established NWDS Volunteer Team in April 2013. As a result, 480 volunteer activities were organized in one and a half year, contributing over 11,000 service hours in total. The Company aims to motivate staff, customers and peers to raise their awareness on sustainable society through the organization of CSR activities and to reunite the power to give back to society. The Company’s achievements and efforts in undertaking corporate social responsibility were widely known and recognized, facilitating the repeated receipt of the “China Charity – Group Award” and making the Company an industry role model.
Ms. Rebecca Woo, Corporate Affairs Director and Chairman of Sustainable Steering Committee of NWDS, said, “ ‘China Charity Festival’ advocates the idea of “charity by all”, everyone can make a change regardless how small it is while NWDS believes that unity can help form a giant charity-green force and the power of any individual should not be underestimated. It is a lucky coincident that the two concepts supplement each other. These awards are a big encouragement to us and more importantly, we are pleased to see this charity force is getting bigger and larger in the society and manages to engage more corporations to join our alliance to give back to society collectively.”