China Charity Federation BMW Warm Heart Fund third Anniversary Warm Heart Night was held in Chongqing on Oct 18, 2011. Besides sharing the experience of a sustainable public welfare fund established in 2008 by the German premium carmaker, BMW also announced a new donation of 20 million yuan ($3.1 million) to BMW Warm-Heart Fund, and the roll out of its "BMW Joy Home" Children Care Program, which would bring Warm Heart Fund to a new stage and extend its corporate social responsibility efforts.

Christoph Stark, president and CEO of BMW Group Region China, made the announcement in Chongqing on Oct 18 when the carmaker celebrated the third anniversary of the fund, which has benefited more than 400,000 people so far.

"Since the establishment of the fund, we have seen it as an important part of our strategy for sustainable development here in China," Stark said.

"We will make best use of the platform in the future to call for more BMW employees, dealers, owners and other volunteers in the society to contribute their love and power and to share the joy of responsibility," he said.

The fund this year kicked off a new program BMW Joy Home. The program will see BMW and its dealerships across the country to donate books, computers, stationery and sports goods to selected schools in the country and build study and extracurricular activity centers there.

Since the middle of the year, BMW has set up several Joy Homes in Anhui, Henan, Chongqing, Guangdong and Shandong.

The company plans to have 20 such homes by the end of this year and more in 2012, and investment in every home will be at least 200,000 yuan, said Daniel Kirchert, senior vice-president of sales and marketing at BMW Brilliance Automotive.

The automaker will also build BMW Joy Home in 10 Hope Schools built by Yao Fundation, founded by famous basketball player and BMW owner Yao Ming.

Kirchert noted that the company will have the homes in schools where they have dealerships nearby, so that the BMW dealers could bring the local buyers to visit the children in these schools..

"We want it to be a long-term relationship between our local dealers, customers and the children, instead of just money donation once only," Kirchert said, noting that BMW will call for its car owners to partner with the students in those selected schools that has BMW Joy Home, and visit them or write letters to them to become real friends with them.

He said he believes such "soul companionship will do more help than merely money support.

Actually, the company has had rich experiences in the area as it has started to associate car buyers and childrens in Sichuan province through its Mentor program started in 2009. Then the company extends the program to Hebei province. So far BMW has arranged nearly 400 pairs of "big pals" and "little buddies" with friendship despite age difference.

The BMW Warm Heart Fund also has supported the BMW China Cultural Journey, a program that aims to protect the intangible cultural heritage in the old civilization.

Huang Chuncai, a 76-year-old craftsman from Fujian province in the south has a special technique- to build timber arch lounge bridge, an ancient type of Chinese bridges constructed without a single nail.

Constructed entirely with tenon-and-mortise joint, the bridge was mainly seen in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces in China where the mountainous regions have many deep, narrow rivers. The architecture method, once prevailed in Song Dynasty (960-1279), is rarely known today and was listed as the Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2009.

Now Huang is among the very few persons in the country that know how to build such bridge. His son also learns it.

Last year, the craft, among many other old, exquisite techniques, received financial assistance from 2011 BMW China Culture Journey, a cultural promotion program supported by the BMW Warm Heart Fund.

From 2007 to 2011, BMW's China Cultural Journey has driven over 12,000 km and visited more than 120 intangible cultural heritage items. The fund has offered donation to 40 heritage items in need of protection and to several research projects on related topics.

The company's corporate social responsibility activities also include the BMW Children's Traffic Safety Education Program, which is now in its seventh year. By the end of last year, the program has benefited more than 320,000 participants around China.

The BMW Green Tree program, in its second year this year, calls on the members of the BMW Warm-Heart family to participate in environmental protection by planting trees.

By this year, the company has planted nearly 66.7 hectares of forest in Hangzhou, Zhuhai and Beijing. For the next three to five years, it plans to plant nearly 666.7-hectare forest in the country.

BMW provided the story.

China Daily

(China Daily 10/31/2011 page18)