Ukraine CSR Bulletin Issue # 119 - 23 June 2010

In this issue of the Ukraine CSR Bulletin: Major Local Charitable Foundations Sign Memorandum to Support Legislative Changes, life:) Wins 2010 Communicator Award for Social Responsibility and East Europe Foundation, Partners Present Results of CSR Survey Online.

- News

* Major Local Charitable Foundations Sign Memorandum to Support Legislative Changes

On 16 June the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research (UCIPR) hosted a ceremony to mark the signing of a memorandum in support of draft laws that will reduce the amount of tax paid by charities that receive charitable help. The ceremony was held in Kyiv. The draft laws, in particular, will ease the procedure and reduce the terms of registration for charitable organizations, as well as lower the tax rate for charity recipients and charitable organizations. Representatives of East Europe Foundation, the Oleksandr Feldman Foundation, the Klitschko Brothers Foundation, the Open Ukraine Foundation, the Olena Franchuk Anti-AIDS Foundation, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation for the Development of Ukraine, International Renaissance Foundation, Caritas Ukraine, Ukraine 3000, the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation and the People of Future Foundation of Sviatoslav Vakarchuk all took part in the ceremony. The memorandum will be sent to the head of the Verkhovna Rada and to the head of the Committee on Culture, and will be published on the UCIPR website. Organizations interested in signing the memorandum, please contact Anastasiya Krasnosilska at anastasia@ucipr.org.ua.

* life:) Wins 2010 Communicator Award for Social Responsibility

On 17 June Ukrainian mobile services operator life:) announced that Astelit had won the 2010 Communicator Award for social responsibility for its "To Help is So Easy!" project. More than 7,000 companies worldwide participated in the competition, which has been honoring creative excellence among communications professionals across the globe for 16 years. life:) presented a multi-faceted program of communication support for its charity project "To Help is So Easy!", which the mobile operator implemented in 2009. The program seeks to help homeless children by supporting charity funds which work across many regions of Ukraine. Its key program initiative in 2009 was the premiere of the new Kira Muratova film dedicated to homeless children, "Melody for a Street Organ", which has been heralded at several major international film festivals. In addition, the Ukrainian company bought the rights to distribute the movie in Ukraine, with all money from ticket sales to be donated to domestic charities that work with homeless children. In autumn 2009 life:) joined with Hello magazine to organize a photo exhibition entitled "Smiling Stars" which featured smiling celebrities. The images were sold at auction for charity, raising additional publicity for the cause. In addition, life:) initiated a charity marathon by inviting subscribers to donate money for orphans in one of several ways: buying an e-card, sending a charity SMS or using an I-box. As a further part of the project, life:) announced a range of contests for the best article about street children in all the major regional published media across Ukraine, and even attracted attention for its charity work among users of social networking sites. The "To Help is So Easy" project raised over UAH 800,000, including corporate donations from the company itself, which continues to raise money for homeless children. Please click here to learn more.

* East Europe Foundation, Partners Present Results of CSR Survey Online

East Europe Foundation and business magazine Expert Ukraine in cooperation with CSR Journal, Global Compact and with support from the R&B company, recently presented the results of their CSR survey entitled "An Evaluation of the Current Situation in CSR: Changes in implementing CSR after the financial crisis and plans for the nearest future". The results were presented during the 4th Annual Conference on CSR conducted by Expert Ukraine in April 2010. Please click here to download the presentation (in Russian).

For further information: Csr Ukraine