Credit: SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde

Goodyear Luxembourg has donated over €19,000 to SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde; the sum will go towards supporting the children and communities of Pikine in Senegal.

Goodyear Luxembourg has been involved with SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde for eighteen years. Each year, the company organises various actions, most of which are led by the Associate Engagement Team.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company organised its auctions for staff in a digital format at the end of 2020. The sales raised €19,097 for the PACOPE community support programme (Programme d'Accompagnement Communautaire pour la Protection de l'Enfant), which has been deployed in Pikine, a suburban town near Dakar in Senegal, since 2017. Some 360 ​​children and 100 families are directly affected by this long-term programme, which aims to enable parents, who have become independent, to better meet the needs of their children and the community to strengthen its child protection system.

On 11 March 2021, Goodyear Luxembourg officials presented Sophie Glesener and Anne Schweizer from SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde with a cheque for the sum raised at the tyre manufacturer's Colmar-Berg site. Xavier Fraipont, Vice President EMEA Product Development, Josy Blum, Director Manufacturing Tire Plant Luxembourg, members of the Associate Engagement Team and three donors of the Goodyear Fundraiser 2020 were present on this occasion. The representatives of SOS Villages d'Enfants Monde thanked Goodyear for its long-standing commitment to the world's most vulnerable children and everyone involved in the 2020 action that helps improve the well-being of children in Pikine.

Faced with the COVID-19 crisis which has severely affected Senegal's economy, worsened unemployment and exposed children to the risk of prolonged school closure, the SOS team quickly responded through targeted measures (protection against the spread of the virus, food support, strengthening of livelihoods, etc.). It also tried to maintain the programme activities focussed on the economic strengthening of families, the management of protection cases, the participation of young people and respect for children's rights. In addition, during the Dakar flooding of September 2020, the NGO launched a project to help affected families in Pikine recover quickly.