For ten years, the Vaillant Group has been supporting SOS Children’s Villages with heating technology, ideas and commitment. Frederik Lippert is responsible for this partnership throughout the company. We talked about charity, warmth and creativity.
The motto of the cooperation between the Vaillant Group and SOS Children’s Villages is “Because every child deserves a warm home”. What does that mean to you?
To me, a warm home means a protected, private place that should allow you to be yourself and spend time with the people you care about. As a father myself, I see it as a safe space in which children can grow up with love and respect.
That sounds like a matter of course – but it’s not.
That’s right. That is why we want to support those who are not fortunate enough to experience all that. As a heating technology provider and family-owned company, we literally donate warmth to our partner “SOS Children’s Villages worldwide” – in the form of modern heating technology, but also through a wide range of social projects.
Heating technology is the core business of the Vaillant Group. Why does the company’s involvement go beyond that?
There are two reasons for that. The first reason is quite rational: if we were to support an SOS Children’s Village solely with the installation of heating technology, the local cooperation would be over very quickly. But corporate citizenship is also about building and maintaining relationships over the long term. The second reason is more emotional: we have become very close to the organisation through the installation of heating technology in many countries. That made it an obvious choice to not only support the SOS Children’s Villages in their mission with heating technology, but also with fundraising, knowledge transfer and communications work.
When you talk about corporate citizenship, what exactly do you mean?
Corporate citizenship is based on the conviction that all companies operate in a social and environmental context for which they have a responsibility. In 2011, we developed our global corporate citizenship guidelines. This framework defines the target groups, fields of action, instruments and criteria for assuming our social responsibility. As a family business, we want to make a valuable contribution to vulnerable children and families with our core business. When we learned in the winter of 2011 that our Hungarian colleagues wanted to support the SOS Children’s Village in Battonya with new heating systems at short notice, we asked ourselves: what if we could develop a global partnership out of this?
The projects with which the Vaillant Group supports SOS Children’s Villages are very diverse. What role does creativity play when you want to help?
Creativity means wanting to make something new. For us, the question almost always starts with: what if? What if our employees had the opportunity to unbureaucratically donate the cents of their monthly salary? What if we made sure that a therapeutic workshop in an SOS Children’s Village was equipped with materials for the next few years? What if we supported the reconstruction of the SOS Children’s Village Brovary in Ukraine with heat pumps during wartime? So we always work with a big “What if?” and then take a close look at how the idea can be implemented.
Can you give an example of the ideation?
In a project with a German SOS Children's Village, we worked with children from what is known as the clarification group. These are very young children for whom it is not yet clear what will happen after their stay in the village. In a conversation with those in charge, I asked: “When these children leave the village, who will read them a bedtime story?” The answer was, “We don’t know.” That’s how we came up with the idea of giving every child who leaves this clarification group a Toniebox – cube-shaped audio devices for children that are very easy to use. We thought: if the children are coming into a new environment where they lack familiar caregivers, we can at least give them some nice stories to take with them. That was a very small idea that shows how warmth can be translated.
For me, the special thing about this cooperation is that right from the start, we didn’t have to convince anyone to get involved with SOS Children’s Villages.
Global project manager
In the meantime, the cooperation has developed from a single project to an international movement. How do you manage to encourage employees to participate across borders?
For me, the special thing about this cooperation is that right from the start, we didn’t have to convince anyone to get involved with SOS Children’s Villages. All that was needed was to provide insights into the organisation through authentic communication and at the same time to pass on the fire that is ignited throughout the company as soon as you learn about SOS Children’s Villages. I’ve been doing that for over ten years now and I haven’t met anyone, neither an employee nor a partner installer, who wasn’t entirely positive about the work with SOS Children’s Villages. Everyone understands what SOS Children’s Villages does, why their work is so important, what it has to do with us as a family-owned company and how we can help as a heating technology provider. Our employees have the opportunity to volunteer for a children’s rights organisation during their working hours. They really appreciate that, because it makes their work mean more. Our commitment to our partner has now become part of who we are.
Which criteria are decisive to ensure a successful cooperation when selecting a cooperation partner?
First and foremost, the goals of the two organisations must be compatible – especially if they come from such different spheres as business and civil society. In the case of SOS Children’s Villages, we soon recognised that the two organisations harmonise very well with each other. Above all, our cooperation is successful because it is on an equal footing. Our partners at SOS Children’s Villages are very enthusiastic about our ideas and work in a highly professional manner. That gives us a lot of leeway and power to make things happen.
Taking a look into the future, what would you like to achieve with the cooperation in the next ten years?
We will try to add a third pillar to our two existing ones – heating technology and social projects – in the area of “Youth Employability”. A training campaign for young people from SOS Children’s Villages, most of whom do not have an easy start to their careers. We are planning a pilot project to integrate this third pillar into the partnership. Above all, however, I hope that we will continue to cooperate as successfully as we have done so far. And that in addition to the 24 countries in which we are already active, there will be a few more. In 2013, the Vaillant Group extended its partnership agreement with SOS Children’s Villages indefinitely. After ten years of successful cooperation, our mission for children and young people is thus only just beginning.
Photos of doormat and children in hammock, © Gerhard Berger
