Community

Countless Roche employees are engaged in voluntary work in their local communities, offering their skills, time and energy to community and social service programmes, health organisations and schools. Roche supports this involvement wherever possible. Employee volunteerism is recognised as a force for positive change, but Roche deliberately refrains from exerting any influence on the type or amount of volunteer work its employees do.

Throughout the Group, Roche may support employee community service by offering employees flexible work schedules and allowing them to take time off for volunteer work. When considering donations, Roche gives preference to eligible projects or organisations in which Roche employees are involved.

At Group headquarters in Basel, a special programme encourages employees to get involved in their communities. Employees who give some of their time to a non-profit community organisation in the Basel region can apply for a grant from Roche for that organisation. The requirements are that the employee's involvement is personal (e.g. regular volunteer service), not just financial, and that the organisation’s purpose be consistent with the Group's goals and policy on corporate giving.

As of 2006 employee contributions to humanitarian projects — and any supplementary or matching funds from Roche — have been coordinated by Re&Act (Roche Employee Action and Charity Trust), a foundation set up in Basel in 2005. The foundation will also coordinate support for relief and reconstruction activities and the use of funds raised by the Roche Children's Walks.

In 2005 Roche Diagnostics sponsored 150 camps for children with diabetes. Roche not only supplied medical equipment but also made staff available to provide advice and training. The camps were held in Argentina, Ecuador, Greece, Korea and a number of other countries.

In Thailand Roche Diagnostics is working together with local partners in order to learn the local approach towards diabetes and diabetes patients. Over 60 people were trained in two four-day courses.

The Roche Children's Walk is a sponsored walk involving Roche employees all over the world. The first Roche Childrens Walk took place in 2003 at the Roche sites in Basel (Switzerland) and Nutley and Palo Alto (USA). In the first year, 1,300 employees took part in the event. Between them they ‘walked up’ a total of 330,000 Swiss francs for AIDS orphans in Malawi. By 2008 over 100 sites participated, and the number of people taking part increased tenfold. This time about 14,000 employees joined in, raising approximately 1.2 million Swiss francs for vulnerable children. See pictures and video-quotes from the global event.

Roche Kuala Lumpur has established a project in collaboration with the Welfare Department to support handicapped children living in rural districts. Roche provides and funds the services of physiotherapists and speech therapists in various homes and centres.

Roche Malaysia makes its buildings and facilities available twice a year for Roche employees and others who want to give blood. Thanks to the good cooperation between the blood bank in Kuala Lumpur and the building managers, the Roche buildings have become a favourite venue for donating blood.

Roche organised a three-month management course for non-government organisations (NGOs) in the healthcare field in 2004, together with the MBA Alumni Association of the University of São Paolo. A group of 26 Roche employees volunteered as teachers in finance, marketing, human resources, strategy and other subjects and also acted as coaches for the participants. The course was conducted on the premises of Roche Jaguaré. The course was such an enormous success that it was repeated in 2005, but as a distance-learning course. This made it possible for NGOs from all over Brazil to participate.

The Roche Pharma team in Dee Why, Australia, has come up with an extremely successful project. It is known as Roche Empowering Volunteers (REV) and was launched in order to give Roche employees an opportunity to work as volunteers in the local community. They do voluntary work in children's homes, on bush regeneration projects and in holiday camps for children living with cancer and for their families. The more than 100 volunteers were so excited that there are now plans to expand the programme