SUPPORT LOCAL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Saint-Gobain encourages its team members to get involved in solidarity actions.

Sports sponsorship provides a way for Saint-Gobain and its subsidiaries to become known to the general public. It also forges links between their teams.

Sponsorship has a universal scope (thanks to the social and cultural role played by sport). It is also local – the choice of a sport or team reflects a country’s sporting habits.

Tanzanian communities have been keen cricketers since the beginning of the twentieth century. They organise a national mini-league as well as friendly matches.

Since 2013, Saint-Gobain sponsored the Saint-Gobain Strikers, a team that participates in the major Dar-Es-Salaam leagues. These leagues take place annually between January and July. Three of the team’s members play internationally for Tanzania.

Saint-Gobain provides the team with equipment (bats, helmets, pads, balls) and finances entry fees so that each player can take part in the whole season’s tournaments.

As a sponsor, Saint-Gobain gains media (press and TV) coverage at cricket tournaments.

Saint-Gobain Gyproc in Zimbabwe is committed to helping local communities. Its involvement ranges from supplying materials to maintaining local infrastructure.

• Improving comfort in the Harare Hospital’s psychiatric ward: Saint-Gobain provided materials to tile floors, repair ceilings and paint walls for four administration block rooms and six seclusion rooms.
• Contributing to local infrastructure: Saint-Gobain is also committed to keeping local roads in the surrounding industrial area in good condition. For example, potholes and faults are regularly patched up on the 1,5 km linking the plant to the main road.

Water is far from everywhere in the Hantam District of the Northern Cape (South Africa), but the residents of Loeriesfontein now have many more drops to drink.

Saint-Gobain’s financial contribution is bringing 2 500 l plastic tanks linked to plastic gutters and drainpipes to between 400 and 500 households in Loeriesfontein, from which Saint-Gobain draws employees for its Bushmanland Mine.

Best of all for those who have only had access to water for six hours a day and have had to rely on water brought at great expense from Nieuwoudtville, 65 km away, it will be right at home, on tap, whenever there has been rain.

The town used to rely on boreholes, but these can no longer fully supply the community’s water needs, even though Loeriesfonteiners are frugal with water – each person uses only about 68 l per day.

Each tank will harvest the water from the frequent, gentle showers that fall predominantly in winter to provide about three months’ drinking water to a family of about five fortunate Loeriesfonteiners.

After helping restore damaged ceilings in the Children of Fire home in Johannesburg, Saint-Gobain PAM in South Africa decided to support the charity.

Children of Fire assists badly burned children (a third of them harmed intentionally) who need their bodies and their self-esteem rebuilt through reconstructive surgery in this supportive "home away from home".

In 2016, as part of an unusual team-building exercise, the whole Saint-Gobain PAM team took about ten children from the home to the Cradle of Humankind, south of Johannesburg (South Africa).