Intel China Honored with Outstanding Corporate Citizen Award

During its fourth annual awards ceremony, the China Corporate Citizenship Forum recently presented two awards to Intel China Ltd. for its outstanding contributions toward the country’s earthquake relief efforts and for corporate citizenship and responsibility.

The China Corporate Citizenship Forum and Award Ceremony are co-organized by the Corporate Citizen Committee of China Association of Social Workers, CCTV-2 and the Foundation of Tecent Commonwealth Charity. Candidates of the award all demonstrate standards of economy, law, ethics and social responsibility across the categories of business ownership, employee relations, consumers, suppliers, government, environment and public utility. The winning organization goes through a stringent evaluation process that includes recommendation and review by both an appointed committee and the online voting public.

"2008 has been an impactful year for China" said Ge Jun, Intel China’s executive director, during a speech at the awards ceremony. "The Wenchuan earthquake on May 12 drew the attention of people all over the country.

"Intel undertook a series of earthquake relief measures, including direct fund donation to the disaster areas and the expansion of the Intel® Learn program and the Intel® Education initiative to the eight most affected areas" Ge added. "Intel is committed to be a responsible corporate citizen and grow with China"

Honoring Intel with the 2008 Special Contribution Award for Earthquake Relief, the award presenter said that "the company demonstrated its commitment to the sustainable recovery and development of disaster areas, and performed outstandingly in both disaster relief and reconstruction"

Within hours of the earthquake, Intel donated RMB 2.1 million (US$307,229) to the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) and its employees donated a total of RMB 48 million (US$7.02 million) to the earthquake-affected areas in Sichuan. After learning that the RCSC Web site would be inaccessible due to increased Internet traffic to the site, Intel China immediately provided RCSC with a server and network equipment worth RMB 1 million (US$146,000); and the Web site was fully operational just days following the earthquake.

Intel Chairman Craig Barrett visited the disaster areas in June and launched the iWorld Project together with the Sichuan Provincial Government. The project focuses on restoring and developing education in earthquake-devastated areas by establishing 200 state-of-the-art e-classrooms, and extending the Intel® Teach Program, Intel® Learn Program and the company’s employee volunteerism program to schools across eight severely-affected counties in Sichuan province.

Since its entry into China, Intel has supported efforts around environmental sustainability, education innovation, community commonwealth programs. For example, Intel China saved 6.6 million Kilowatt/hours in the first half of this year by implementing energy-saving plans, equal to the decrease of 5,195 tons of CO2 emissions. Additionally, since 1994 Intel has supported China’s education system by implementing many programs. The Intel® Teach Program has now trained 1.25 million teachers, benefiting millions of students in China.

Encouraging employees to provide community service is also another important facet of its commitment to corporate responsibility. More than 6,000 Intel employees in China have provided over 60,000 hours of volunteer service this year.