Starting date of project: 2020
Duration: 2 years (ongoing)
Allianz, in cooperation with Startsocial and Wellcome, created “Seidabei” to promote civic engagement in a sustainable and permanent manner. This social initiative offers its employees to work voluntarily with a charitable organization. Employees can choose a social project using an online portal. This initiative highlights an efficient example of corporate responsibility.
As CEO of Allianz Deutschland AG Dr. Klaus-Peter Röhler stated “I’ve been supporting Startsocial myself for many years and I’m thrilled that with the new engagement platform we’ve found a way to make Allianz’s social engagement even more flexible and anchor it in the company.” In Germany, we have been supporting an ideas competition for social startups since 2001: startsocial e.V.!
Allianz employees are passionately involved as coaches or jurors – year after year they discover outstanding initiatives there. Jambo Bukoba e.V., Hackerschool gmbH , Zeltschule e.V. oder wellcome gGmbH are just a few examples. In addition, five children’s aid organizations of Allianz for Children and Young People have been active in Germany for over 25 years.
Collectively, in the past year almost 300 projects were supported. The focus is on young people who need special support due to their physical, mental, emotional or social development. Allianz were recognized for their outstanding contribution to SDG17 Partnership for the Goals, by EU Tech Chamber’s SDG AWARDS 2021. Seidabei additionally contributes to SDG4 Quality Education, SDG5 Gender Equality, SDG8 Decent Work and Economic Growth and SDG10 Reduced Inequalities.
Mutual understanding and trust in each other is important for the success of a joint collaboration. At the beginning, there was the realization that Allianz employees were partially supporting NGOs for the duration of an ideas competition. After that, paths generally diverged. But why shouldn’t we support NGOs in the long term and, above all, how?, says Tanja Olbert, Award recipient from Allianz.
She realized that a common platform of the NGOs would be beneficial. How to find a simple technical solution? which on the one hand meets Allianz standards, but on the other hand does not overburden the NGOs.
These basic things were challenging at the beginning. But important and right to develop the platform uniquely. Today they have created a scalable platform that many Allianz companies in Germany can use – at the same time the technical core is transferable to other international Allianz companies.
On the other hand, in discussions with other companies she noticed that there is a lack of belief in the professionalism of NGOs. NGO’s do not work better or worse in many areas; they work differently than commercial companies. And to be honest, in some things they admit they can learn a lot, from NGOs. NGOs react incredibly quickly to changing conditions and are 100% empathetic to their customers. Here they believe learn a lot of lessons can be learnt. ‘
My credo is: Give each other trust and always communicate openly and transparently – the result of the cooperation will surprise everyone.
Sedabei’s goal is to be able to make the platform available to other companies, or for them to be part of their community. New product developments cost money and resources – we can also make these available digitally to other interested companies. On the one hand, Tanja is convinced that they act as a role model and encourage other companies and NGOs to work together in partnership.
On the other hand, she hopes that they will find more “seidabei” followers who support their approach:
Meeting the coming social challenges together. Their aim is to be a pioneer for resource-saving solutions! And at the same time to inspire other business enterprises and non-profit organizations to embark on a sustainability journey together. “We can only master the coming challenges together,” Tanja believes.
Ultimately, it is about creating alliances in partnership with completely different players.
Useful links:
https://www.facebook.com/seidabei
