Because every child needs a warm home: 10 years of partnership between SOS Children's Villages and Vaillant Group

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Vaillant Group

Press release

2023-12-14

Company
Sustainability

Remscheid/Munich, 14 December 2023

Worldwide strategic partnership for disadvantaged children and families
Vaillant Group supports children's rights organisation with modern heating technology and social projects
76 SOS Children's Villages in 24 countries supported since 2013

The Vaillant Group and SOS Children's Villages worldwide are connected by an international partnership since 2013. The family-owned company helps the children's rights organisation with modern heating technology and a wide range of social projects. Over the past ten years, the Vaillant Group has supported 76 SOS Children's Villages in 24 countries, reaching over 4,300 children. To mark this milestone anniversary, the Vaillant Group and SOS Children's Villages worldwide are reaffirming their international co-operation for disadvantaged children and families.

Modern heating technology and social projects

In the partnership, the Vaillant Group is focusing primarily on its technological expertise. “The key to the success of the partnership is that we can contribute our core competence as a leading global heating technology provider. That our employees put their heart and soul into driving the partnership forward, resulting in a variety of initiatives in many countries. Our partners, the installers, who professionally install the heating technology donated by us are a major pillar of the cooperation. Together, we ensure that disadvantaged children and families have a warm home,” says Dr.-Ing. Norbert Schiedeck, Vaillant Group CEO.

Numerous creative, social projects complement the support with modern heating technology – whether portable audio devices for bedtime stories in Germany, a fundraising regatta in France or Christmas campaigns in Spain. Barbara Gruner, Executive Board Member SOS Children's Villages worldwide: “The cooperation with the Vaillant Group holds a special significance for us. It is not the norm for corporate partnerships to last so long and with such intensity. The two organisations have grown close together over the last ten years. Employees on both sides work on a shared mission with a lot of commitment and great mutual respect.”

Broad support for children and families in Ukraine

Supporting children and families impacted by the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine has played an important role in the international partnership since last year. Immediately after the outbreak of the war, the Vaillant Group launched a worldwide employee donation campaign. The company doubled all donations received and upped the total to €255,000. In the summer of 2023, the heating technology specialist donated a substantial package of heat pumps, gas condensing boilers and hot water storage tanks for the reconstruction of the SOS Children's Village in Brovary, Ukraine, near Kiev. On Giving Tuesday, the international day of donation, the family-owned company doubled all contributions received up to a total of €150,000 – to mark the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Vaillant Group, which was founded by Johann Vaillant in 1874.

The Vaillant Group is an internationally active company based in Remscheid, Germany, which operates in the fields of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning technology. As one of the global market and technology leaders, the Vaillant Group develops and manufactures customised products, systems and services to provide a comfortable living environment. Its product portfolio ranges from efficient heating devices based on conventional energy sources to system solutions for using renewable energy. In the financial year 2022, the company, which has been family-owned since its foundation in 1874, generated sales of around 3.7 billion euros with its workforce of 17,000.

SOS Children’s Villages is an independent, non-governmental and non-denominational aid organisation focused on ensuring that children and young people without parental care or at risk of losing it grow up with the care, relationships and support they need to become their strongest selves. SOS Children’s Villages currently supports children and families in 138 countries. The organization consists of a network of more than one hundred associations that have grown over decades, are rooted in the respective country and are united under a common roof. The worldwide success of SOS Children’s Villages is based on the combination of autonomous local responsibility, global action and a simple, timeless concept.