In France, nearly half (47%) of corporate foundations were created between 2000 and 2009, according to the last National Survey of Funds and Foundations published by the Observatoire de la philanthropie de la Fondation de France. 43% of corporate foundations were created over the past 10 years, of which 18% between 2015 and 2017 (1). The corporate foundations have shown dynamism and have become levers of innovation and transformation for the companies.

As part of the Grameen Credit Agricole Foundation’s Friends Club meetings, the Evergreen Campus of Crédit Agricole SA in Montrouge welcomed on November 28th, three female managers of Corporate Foundations who came to present their trajectories but also and above all the commitments and impact of the Foundations they lead.

Under the moderation of Eric Campos, Managing Director of the Grameen Credit Agricole Foundation, Miren Bengoa, Managing Director of the Chanel Foundation, Aurélie Bellemin, Managing Director of Fondation Solidarités by Crédit Agricole Centre-est, and Viviane Olivo, Managing Director of Fondation Crédit Agricole Nord de France shared with the audience the objectives and values of their respective Foundations and their point of view on the impact the work performed by corporate foundations may have on the business world and society at large.

For more information :
Fondation CHANEL
Fondation Solidarités by Crédit Agricole Centre-est
Fondation Crédit Agricole Nord de France

(1) Article “Philantrophie : le boom des fondations d’entreprise”, Le Monde, 04/06/2019

 

 

 

 

19 tons of plastic enter the ocean every minute. Yet this waste can be an invaluable resource! Make recycling this waste a profitable and job-generating activity: this is the bet of the Plastic Odyssey team. Merchant navy officers, sales manager and engineer, these young entrepreneurs decided to build an ambitious project to raise awareness of recycling plastic waste and share know-how for emerging countries.

A shipping to share low-tech and open-source plastic recycling technologies

For 3 years, the Plastic Odyssey team will sail the seas of the world on a ship to fight against plastic pollution. The expedition will stop in emerging countries to encourage local waste reduction initiatives and the creation of small recycling plants. At each stopover, Plastic Odyssey will share low-tech and open-source recycling technologies to promote the development of micro-entrepreneurship and the circular economy. Training in sorting and recycling plastics will also be offered.

This project does not aim to collect the plastic present in the oceans but to act upstream, by working with the local populations on depolluting solutions, so that the terrestrial waste does not end up in the oceans.

The first ship that advances thanks to recycled plastic

The ship will be ready to go in the second half of 2020. Measuring 40 meters in length, it will operate using fuel made from plastic waste thanks to a pyrolysis plant installed at the rear of the boat: a great first in the field of navigation.

For 3 years, he will successively travel the coasts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia to raise awareness of plastic pollution in the oceans,  encourage the reduction of plastic and its recycling and transform plastic waste into resources.

The fight against plastic pollution: a major social issue

The fight against plastic pollution is a concern that Crédit Agricole shares with Plastic Odyssey. The Group was already a partner of Plastic Odyssey in 2018, during the prototyping phase of the project. Crédit Agricole, via 16 entities (1), is continuing this commitment by supporting Plastic Odyssey’s approach with € 1.2 million over 5 years. The support provided for this expedition is in line with the Societal Project of the Crédit Agricole Group.

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(1) 7 Regional Banks (Alpes Provence, Aquitaine, Atlantique Vendée, Charente-Maritime Deux-Sèvres, Finistère, Normandie Seine, Provence Côte d’Azur), BforBank, CAMCA Mutuelle, Crédit Agricole Assurances, CACEIS, Crédit Agricole CIB, Crédit Agricole Immobilier, Crédit Agricole S.A., Crédit Agricole Pologne and Crédit Agricole Italie..

In October, the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation invested for the first time in South Africa with the microfinance institution Phakamani Foundation. The Phakamani Foundation is a microfinance institution that empowers poor women to succeed at microenterprise. The Phakamani’s microenterprise programme is modelled on the internationally renowned Grameen Bank. Its system of training, group borrowing, and on-going support brings both accountability and practical assistance to the development of the microenterprises.

The programme targets rural and peri-urban areas with very high unemployment. The neediest people within these communities are identified by using a household index, an asset test, and a basic interview. Women who may be interested in starting their own microenterprises are invited to learn about Phakamani’s programme. To date, the institution has over 31,000 female clients all located in rural areas and manages a portfolio of nearly € 3 million.

A second investment in South Africa is being finalised in favour of SEF, a microfinance institution that serves 197,359 active borrowers (99% of women).

To strengthen its action and commitment to the energy transition, Crédit Agricole has adopted a Group climate strategy, aligned with the Paris Agreement, which will be rolled out by all of its entities. Through this strategy, the Group aims to make green finance one of its levers for growth. In this context, Crédit Agricole is the first major bank to make the exit of coal a climatic imperative.

The exposure of the Group’s portfolios to coal industry will be in line with a full-fledged coal phase-out by: 2030 for EU and OECD countries; 2040 for China; 2050 for the rest of the world.

As of 2019, Crédit Agricole will:

• Disclose our coal exposure on an annual basis.
• Ask companies to provide us by 2021 with a detailed phasing out plan of their coal-sector mining and production assets.
• No longer develop business relations with corporations generating more than 25% of their turnover in the thermal coal sector.
• Stop working with corporations currently developing or planning to develop new thermal coal capacities along the entire value chain.
• Companies failing to subscribe to this approach will be automatically placed in a “transition watch list” portfolio and subject to the reduction or even the freezing of our financial support.

The point in pictures with Eric Campos, Head of CSR of Crédit Agricole S.A. and Managing Director of the Grameen Crédit Agricole SA Foundation

The Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation Friends Club is an area open exclusively to employees of the Crédit Agricole Group who are interested in the activities and mission of the Foundation. It is a Club of information sharing and debates organised throughout the year with the Foundation’s partners.

To mark the end of the year, a meeting is organised on November 28th at the Crédit Agricole Campus in Montrouge. Come chat with the General Delegates of three Corporate Foundations that will discuss the action and impact of Foundations, which bring innovation to the company and society.

The event is exclusively reserved for employees of the Crédit Agricole Group. To register, please contact carolina.herrera@credit-agricole-sa.fr

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Created in 2008, under the joint impetus of the directors of Crédit Agricole S.A. and Professor Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Grameen Bank, the Grameen Crédit Agricole SA Foundation is a multi-business operator that contributes to the fight against poverty through financial inclusion and entrepreneurship with a social impact. As an investor, lender, technical assistance coordinator and fund advisor, the Foundation supports microfinance institutions and social enterprises in nearly 40 countries.

From 20 to 25 October, the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation brought together in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), 22 African microfinance institutions (MFIs), partners supported within the framework of the African Facility, a scheme set up in 2013 by the Grameen Credit Agricole Foundation and the French Development Agency (AFD) to support a larger number of rural MFIs in sub-Saharan Africa.

On October 20th, the 42 representatives of the partner institutions met with the Foundation’s teams in order to assess the African Facility over the past year, welcome the new beneficiaries of the programme and share the best practices of the different institutions that attended, before meeting with representatives of AFD and Proparco present in Ouagadougou.

Participation in the African Microfinance Week

The African Facility partners also had the opportunity to participate in ADA’s African Microfinance Week (SAM 2019) from October 21st to 25th. Open to all microfinance practitioners, SAM is a common African platform for reflection and exchange among all stakeholders in the sector to accelerate in a sustainable manner both financial inclusion and economic growth of the continent.

This event aims to facilitate exchanges between microfinance professionals and foster synergies at regional and international level. With this in mind, the Foundation organized a training course on Adaptation of MFIs to climate change that brought together more than fifty professionals, mainly from Africa, concerned by the fact that the variations and the difficulty in predicting the climate put at risk the livelihoods of microfinance borrowers, and thereby threaten the future ability of MFIs to operate in rural areas.

Represented by Philippe Guichandut, Director of Inclusive Finance Development, the Foundation also spoke at a round table on the state of the art of the inclusive finance sector and its contributions to the SDGs in Africa. He stressed, among other things, the challenges linked to the financial inclusion of refugees, the challenges of digital finance as well as the importance of financing small farms which remain at the heart of the Foundation’s concerns.

Further information

Launched by the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation, Crédit Agricole SA and CA Center-est, Centimes solidaires aims to finance entrepreneurship projects by mobilizing employees. On November 4, Rania, an entrepreneur and Syrian refugee supported by the operation, shared her experience during a launch event on the Montrouge Campus.

An exceptional meeting

The Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation, Crédit Agricole S.A. and Crédit Agricole Centre-Est are pursuing the Solidarity Cents Campaign which will take place from November 18 to 22 at the Montrouge, Saint-Quentin and Lyon campuses.

To launch the 2019 edition of the campaign, Crédit Agricole welcomed on November 4, on the Montrouge Campus, Rania, entrepreneur and Syrian refugee financially supported thanks to the 2018 campaign. After leaving Syria and thanks to the ICI Project (Incubation, Creation, Inclusion) of Entrepreneurs du Monde funded through Solidarity Cents, Rania launched her catering service to share the traditional dishes of her country.

In 2019, the campaign scales up!

Launched in 2018, Solidarity Cents aims to finance entrepreneurship projects by mobilising Crédit Agricole employees who are invited to donate 50 cents when paying for their meals in collective restaurants.

Thanks to the support of Crédit Agricole employees, € 7,000 were donated to Entrepreneurs du Monde in 2018 to finance the ICI Project which supports entrepreneurship projects for refugees, single parents and homeless people in Lyon. A total of 20 training courses were organised, which allowed the programme team to train 18 people in the entrepreneurship field.

This year, once again, the beneficiary of this campaign will be Entrepreneurs du Monde. The campiagn will take place in parallel at the Crédit Agricole Campuses in Montrouge, Saint-Quentin and Lyon from 18 to 22 November. Crédit Agricole S.A., the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation and Crédit Agricole Centre-Est will embrace the generosity of their employees by contributing to the collection. For the years to come, Entrepreneurs du Monde’s objective is to reach a larger number of beneficiaries, that is a total of 40 project leaders by the end of 2019 and 50 in 2020.

Watch the video of the operation which presents Rania’s journey and the testimonies of the staff who participated in the operation.

More information: carolina.herrera@credit-agricole-sa.fr

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Created in 2008, under the joint impetus of the directors of Crédit Agricole S.A. and Professor Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Grameen Bank, the Grameen Crédit Agricole SA Foundation is a multi-business operator that contributes to the fight against poverty through financial inclusion and entrepreneurship with a social impact. As an investor, lender, technical assistance coordinator and fund advisor, the Foundation supports microfinance institutions and social enterprises in nearly 40 countries.