Franklin Templeton Donates €2k to SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde

A first, symbolic cheque remittance has brought together Franklin Templeton International Services S.à rl (FTIS), a world leader in asset management for private, professional and institutional investors, and SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde, a Luxembourgish non-profit association that has been supporting vulnerable children around the world since 1974.

With 11,217 professionals in 34 countries, including 91 employees in Luxembourg where the company has been established for almost 30 years, FTIS has been in solidarity with SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde since 2016, namely through the involvement of its employees.

Visiting the premises of the charity for an exchange on projects, Efthymia Trigkidou, Senior Corporate Counsel, and Jia Li-Schmitt, Senior HR Consultant, two FTIS employees, presented a cheque for €2,000 to Sophie Glesener, Director of SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde, and Anne Schweizer, Head of Partnerships. This sum, which was planned for the organisation of the FTIS Christmas party 2020, was turned into a donation to the charity following a staff vote.

The cheque remittance crowns five years of partnership and solidarity activities, including funds collected by colleagues from Axelle Preud'homme, Marketing Director France Benelux, during her participation in the Uganda Challenge 2019 organised by SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde and fundraising events, particularly the cake bake days.

Efthymia Trigkidou and Jia Li-Schmitt told the charity representatives: "We are happy to be able to partner over the long term in the work of your association for vulnerable children in the world who, in this period of unprecedented crisis, must be even more protected and strengthened in order to be able to project themselves into the future".

The representatives of SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde welcomed these renewed initiatives, stating: “We thank you very much for your dedication to our work in favour of the protection and rights of children, their care and their well-being so that 'tey live better within their families and communities".

They then presented the development programmes underway, particularly in West Africa, and the emergency interventions recently supported in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. Reflecting on 2020, a particularly difficult year for the most vulnerable populations, they presented the responses to the COVID-19 crisis undertaken on the ground before speaking of the current challenges and situations that endanger the lives of countless children.