Asia

LEADs

The Foundation has developed the Macquarie LEADS program, which brings together all of its Leadership, Education, Advancement, Development and Support activities involving staff as volunteers.

Examples of LEADS programs across the region:

Mentoring

Macquarie has a number of mentoring programs in which staff work with local community partners to act as positive role models providing mentoring support to young adults.

• In Hong Kong, staff have partnered with TREATS, a local organisation that aims to integrate children from all walks of life and which also runs a mentoring program with troubled teenage girls

• In Hong Kong, staff work closely with the Po Leung Kuk, a charitable organisation and orphanage in Hong Kong that supports children with residential care facilities by participating in a year-long mentoring program for a group of undergraduate students who have all lived at or received Po Leung Kuk services at some point in their lives.
  
  
  Po Leung Kuk students and their Macquarie mentors at a graduation celebration.

Big Buddy Reading Program

The Foundation has long encouraged childhood literacy through its Big Buddy reading programs in Australia, Europe and Asia. The 'Little Buddies' (students) who take part are identified as requiring extra assistance with their reading and comprehension and are matched with two Macquarie 'Big Buddies'. Each week one of these Big Buddies attends the reading session at the school. The basis of the program is to not only assist students with their reading skills but also to foster in them a love of books and reading.

• In Hong Kong, the program is held at a Po Leung Kuk run kindergarten in Lam Tin in the New Territories.

Volunteering

Some examples of volunteer support across the region:

• Hong Kong and Manila staff participate in graduate and volunteer networks. Comprising groups of community-minded new graduates in some of our major offices across the world, these networks form an important part of Macquarie’s volunteer community. In the Manila office, graduates plan a variety of volunteer and social welfare activities in the Philippines, including Christmas carols fundraiser with beneficiaries including the Hospicio de San Jose, a not-for-profit that cares for children, the elderly, and the disabled
• Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore-based staff have visited Bacolod City in the Philippines every year since 2007 to volunteer for International Care Ministries (ICM) and Gawad Kalinga. Staff volunteer in local slum communities playing with pre-school children, visiting livelihood programs, tuberculosis patients and help build houses for slum residents. In addition, staff across the region have contributed more than $HK6 million to ICM so recipient families can participate in classes to improve hygiene and health awareness, money management and livelihood opportunities
• Hong Kong and Singapore based staff have volunteered in Cambodia as part of Project Hammer visiting Phnom Penh charity trips to assist underprivileged children and their families. Organised in partnership with the Hotel Intercontinental, the Macquarie team raise money to build houses, contributing to the completion of a school in a slum area, and serve over 360 children suffering from HIV/AIDS. Staff also donate soccer balls and netballs, colouring books, pencils and second-hand clothes did their best to bring smiles to more than 1,000 children on the trips
• In Manila, each year staff plant a wide variety of tree saplings for the Haribon Foundation at La Mesa Watershed, the primary source of drinking waters for millions of Manila residents, to help prevent soil erosion and excessive sedimentation
  
  
• In Bangkok, staff plant trees to help the local elephant population for Bring the Elephant Home Foundation
• In Seoul, staff established a yearly Community Day in 2010. More than 100 staff spend up to a full business day once a year volunteering at charities which help children and adults. Activities include serving meals to homeless people, entertaining disabled children and adults, refurbishing facilities used by low-income clients and donating blood
• In Shanghai, staff have travelled to Sichuan province in China to visit earthquake devastated areas. In central Du Jiang Yan, staff visited the Tian Ma School and raised money for a playground as well as collected and delivered blankets to families in need. Staff have also volunteered at the Bi Feng Xia Giant Panda Base in Ya'an, feeding the animals and cleaning their enclosures
• In Singapore, staff regularly volunteer by teaching English, assisting with a Sunday sports program and sitting on the board of Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME), an organisation that assists foreign workers in Singapore
• In Tokyo, Macquarie staff work with Special Olympians - volunteering their time at sports events and participating in teams with special Olympians to race around the Imperial Palace - and participate in the finance industry’s FIT for Charity event by entering a Macquarie team every year.
• Macquarie Group Hong Kong has been awarded the Caring Company logo 2010-2012 by the Hong Kong Council of Social Services. This recognises Macquarie's involvement and commitment to good corporate citizenship over the past three years in the categories of Volunteering, Giving, Caring for the Employee and Caring for the Environment in Hong Kong.
  

 

Macquarie believes it has a responsibility to work for the betterment of the communities in which it operates and has recognised that capacity building is just as important in the not-for-profit sector as it is for business. It has supported the sector's sustainability through a number of initiatives, with grants, workshops, board placements, and consulting programs staples of Macquarie's global commitment.

Some examples of capacity building across the region:

• In Hong Kong, Macquarie has hosted and provided volunteers for a number of workshops for Asian Charity Services and its clients since 2008. Staff have volunteered at workshops for local charities in the areas of leadership, corporate governance and strategic planning
  
  
• In Manila, IT staff give computer literacy tuition each year to principals, elementary and high school teachers and division staff on Microsoft applications as part of the Teach-The-Teacher program in Mandaluyong City in the Philippines.

The Macquarie Group Foundation actively supports Macquarie staff pursuing their own community interests and passions. This results in a range of local not-for-profits benefiting from staff's volunteering and fundraising assistance. Under its staff donation support policy, the Foundation supports staff donations to and fundraising for various charities, which significantly increases each contribution to the organisations staff support.

Some examples of fundraising across the region include:

• In Hong Kong, Mumbai and Tokyo, the Oxfam Trailwalker is enthusiastically supported by Macquarie. Since 2009, Macquarie staff in Hong Kong have been one of the leading Trailwalker fundraisers in the Asia region
  
  
• In Hong Kong, staff have enthusiastically fundraised for the Foreign Correspondent Charity Fund supporting Po Leung Kuk, a charitable organisation for disadvantaged children, with the ultimate aim of sending students through university. Staff raise money through a variety of events, including raffles, morning teas and personal donations
• In Hong Kong, staff have fundraised for Operation Santa Claus, an annual charity campaign that aims to support a number of needy charities within the Hong Kong community and beyond each year. Macquarie have been a major donor for the initiative each year since 2006
• In Tokyo, staff fundraise every year for the Kasumisou Foundation providing support to some of the most disadvantaged people in Burma, Cambodia, China, Indonesia and Laos and for the Japan Association for Refugees.

Some examples of in-kind support across the region include:

• In Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila for Christmas each year Macquarie staff donate toys to needy organisations. Past recipients have included UNICEF, Food/Toys from the Heart, Sunnyside Haven of Hope, Queen Mary Hospital Hong Kong, the Little Life Warriors Society, the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children and Hospicio De San Jose, with volunteers travelling to the centres to distribute hundreds of toys to needy children
• In Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore, Macquarie Earth Day Collections take place each year, giving staff the chance to donate unwanted goods to worthy causes
• In Manila, staff also recycle and sell cans and plastic bottles, donating the money raised from this program to a different beneficiary each quarter, including the Hospicio de San Jose and the Centre for Health Improvement and Life Development, a temporary shelter for patients who have critical illnesses and lack accommodation while undergoing medical evaluation or treatment
• In Tokyo, Hong Kong and China, Macquarie staff arrange for hundreds of computers to be donated to needy charities that can use older equipment, including the Japan Association for Refugees, Kasumisou Foundation, Special Olympics Nippon Tokyo and Table for Two in Japan, Po Leung Kuk, Caritas, International Care Ministries and International China Concern in Hong Kong and China. In some locations, IT staff also helped train the recipients of the computers.