Allianz SE and SOS Children’s Villages on Tuesday in Johannesburg announced their global partnership at a joint event. The initial three-year partnership will see Allianz companies across the globe lend their support to SOS Children's Villages. In addition to projects to provide children with individual support, Allianz will be contributing its risk management expertise, for example by helping to turn children's villages into safe ports of call for local communities in the event of a catastrophe.

Allianz, which operates in 15 countries in Africa, has been providing young people with targeted support for more than 20 years now. "As an insurer and investor, we think and plan ahead longer-term than many others do,” said Oliver Bäte, CEO of Allianz SE. “With our ‘Encouraging Future Generations’ social programme, which has now entered into its first global partnership with SOS Children’s Villages, we are seeking solutions for challenges relating to social inclusion. Together with the SOS Children’s Villages, we are encouraging young people worldwide to shape the future in a sustainable manner.”

Richard Pichler, Special Representative of SOS Children’s Villages International, said: “We currently provide 80,000 children and teenagers in 134 countries (47 in Africa) with a safe place to call home. As a result, we are delighted to have secured the support of Allianz, a global partner that shares our values and objectives and can also contribute complementary knowledge and skills. We want to achieve more together by launching training programmes for young people, improving the opportunities open to them on the labour market, dealing with risk provisions within communities to mention only a few of the areas we want to focus on.”

The joint event included a podium discussion on “What contribution can the corporate sector make to social inclusion?” Experts from both organisations had a lively discussion on security and the fulfillment of basic human needs as the fundamental prerequisites for social inclusion, as well as on the need for the corporate sector to show a commitment to social issues.

More than 12,000 Allianz employees worldwide had taken part in the first Allianz World Run to mark the beginning of the partnership. In the period between May and the end of July, they covered a distance of 1.4 million kilometers to raise funds for SOS Children's Villages, the equivalent of circling the globe 34 times, and raised EUR 600,000 that will be used to finance children's village projects in twelve countries (Argentina, Austria, China, Colombia, Croatia, Germany, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Luxembourg, Mexico, Syria, Thailand).

The Group set a new world record in connection with the Allianz World Run: “Longest distance covered by one team in 90 days”. Allianz World Run pictures from across the globe were also used to break the Guinness World RecordsTM for the "longest line of photographs” (8,470 images, 1,225 metres). Click here to read testimonials of some of the employees.

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