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Swire Properties Receives Hong Kong Volunteer Award for 10-year Contribution to the Community

17 Oct 2011

Swire Properties Receives Hong Kong Volunteer Award for 10-year Contribution to the Community

Swire Properties is honoured to receive The Fourth Hong Kong Volunteer Award (Corporate Award) from the Agency for Volunteer Service.

This award recognises outstanding business corporations for its distinguished contributions and accomplishments in promoting volunteering in Hong Kong. The judging panel applauded the Company’s Community Ambassador Programme, and in particular praised the programme’s work in leveraging volunteers’ skills and expertise for its activities.

Guided by the philosophy of “Building Communities”, Swire Properties established its Community Ambassador Programme in 2001. The programme seeks to help the elderly, the disabled, children and disadvantaged families in the community.

Led by the employees themselves, the programme is an ever-growing network of employees, their families and friends, business partners, tenants, customers and subsidiary companies of Swire. The Company’s employees design and organise all of the programme’s activities and contribute their skills, professional expertise and resources to support those in need. Over the past 10 years, the Community Ambassador team has grown from 40 to over 1,000 Ambassadors, who have contributed over 45,000 service hours and participated in over 400 activities to benefit more than 50,000 people in the community.

“The Community Ambassador Programme is a great source of pride for us,” said Martin Cubbon, Swire Properties’ Chief Executive. “Our Ambassadors have shown an incredible commitment to the community, and I am very proud of them. I am delighted that the Company’s support is being acknowledged with this prestigious award, but the real recognition goes to our Ambassadors who have contributed their personal time, energy and creativity to this programme.”

The Company supports the Community Ambassador Programme with policies such as flexible work arrangements and special award schemes. To encourage employee participation, the Company recently launched a new service leave policy which offers special day-off arrangements to staff who have contributed certain amount of their leisure time to volunteer service.

The HKYWCA Ming Yue District Elderly Community Centre nominated the Company for The Fourth Hong Kong Volunteer Award. “We are thrilled that Swire Properties has won this award,” said Ms Daisy Li , Supervisor, HKYWCA Ming Yue District Elderly Community Centre . “As a partner of the Community Ambassador Programme, we have been impressed by their enthusiasm and devotion. The Ambassadors involved us in every stage of the projects, from discussions and planning to implementation, to ensure that they were designing neighborhood network projects which could respond to elderly people in need.”

The Community Ambassador Programme will celebrate its tenth anniversary of community service this year with the Love’s Team Charity Bazaar, which will be held on 2 and 3 December in TaiKoo Place, Island East. All proceeds from the event will be donated to support the community development of the five co-organisers — Arts with the Disabled Association Hong Kong, The Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong, SAHK, St. James’s Settlement and the WWF–Hong Kong.