Being a responsible business

CSR touches every part of our business – from the way we interact with our customers, suppliers and partners, look after our people, give back to communities and support charities, right through to our practical concern for the environment. We commit a minimum of 1% of our UK pre-tax profits (in cash and in kind) to activities which support society. We provided a total of £22.3 million designed to benefit society in 2008, of which £2.5 million was in charitable donations.
     Our community investment strategy aims to help individuals and communities make a better world through improved communications skills and technology. Our BT Better World campaign aims to ensure that young people have the communication skills they need. Over three million young people benefit from BT’s educational resources every year.
     ChildLine, a UK charity, receives calls from 4,500 children every day but lack of funds means that many hundreds go unanswered. We are working with ChildLine on a campaign to ensure that every child’s call for help is answered. In 2008, BT and BT employees raised £650,000 for ChildLine.
     BT volunteers and call centre employees take donations as part of major charity telephone and online appeals, including Children in Need, Sport Relief and Comic Relief, helping to raise millions of pounds each year. We also manage the telephone networks and provide equipment for these events. And we help the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) respond to international disasters.
     In 2007, we launched our first global development partnership with UNICEF to develop community projects to bring education, ICT (information and communications technology) and communications skills to disadvantaged children. BT is investing £1.5 million over three years and this will be added to by fundraising activities by BT people around the world. Projects were launched in South Africa in 2007, and in Brazil in April 2008. China is scheduled for 2009. More than £140,000 has already been raised to support the projects in South Africa where, with BT’s support, UNICEF has built or renovated classrooms at 25 of the country’s most impoverished schools, as well as providing ICT training for teachers. Around 18,000 children have benefited. The two-year initiative in Brazil aims to reach more than 10,000 disadvantaged young people in ten schools in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Salvador and Fortaleza. By making communications skills and technology available in this way, we are enabling young people to tackle issues that affect them, their schools and their communities.
     In June 2007, we announced a three-year partnership with the British Red Cross in support of disaster relief worldwide. We are the first global communications services company ever to partner with the British Red Cross in this way. We are investing £100,000 a year to provide essential satellite, IT and GPS equipment. By funding a three-year programme, BT and the British Red Cross can ensure that the relevant equipment is in place so that relief can be deployed anywhere in the world as quickly as possible. This partnership builds on our current support for disaster relief through DEC and is a natural extension of our own emergency response and civil resilience activities.