The Michele Ferrero Entrepreneurial Project not only aims to create new jobs, but also support social initiatives that safeguard the health, education and social development of children and young people.
In 2013, the Ministry of Education in South Africa launched the “94+ school projects for Madiba to provide infrastructural assistance to at least 94 South African schools through a joint effort with local private companies. The Michele Ferrero Entrepreneurial Project in South Africa answered the call by fully renovating the premises and sport facilities of the Japie Greyling Primary School (later renamed Randvaal Primary School), located 12 km from our Walkerville plant. Almost half of the school’s 1,300+ pupils benefit from the National School Nutrition Program that provides nutritious meals to pupils of under-priviledged families.
In addition, construction of a sport center at the Laerskool De Deur primary school will provide an opportunity also to promote Ferrero Kinder Joy of Moving’s methodology at local schools
Ferrero India’s plant is located at Baramati, about two-hour’s drive from Pune, where the Ferrero Business Unit headquarters located. With a population of about 70,000 people, it is considered a small city by local standards, yet it is an important agricultural sub-district area producing sugar, wheat, grapes and other crops.
Ferrero India has always kept a special eye on the needs of our plant’s workers coming from such villages, especially female workers. They can commute to the factory, in fact, utilizing a bus service set up by the company. Moreover, in 2014, the Michele Ferrero Entrepreneurial Project in India launched its “Pietro Ferrero Kindergarden” at Baramati. This modern educational facility, with a covered surface of about 1000 square meters, hosts at present about 100 children aged below six years. Two third of them are sons and daughters of female employees working at the Ferrero Baramati plant; the remaining one third, instead, are children of disadvantaged families of surrounding rural villages. Ferrero India provides also to them, free of charge, safe transport to/from the Kindergarten, as well as a wide range of quality educational, nutritional and medical services.
Rural mothers are particularly affected by the urban-rural divide in India. In fact, inequalities in socio‐economic status and place of residence are particularly evident, for instance, for access and use of mother-and-child care services, which favor the rich and urban populations.
To address some of such unbalances, the Indian Government launched the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), one of the world’s largest government-led programme for provision of early childhood development, that is implemented by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. It provides a wide range of maternal and child health services including preschool non-formal education, supplementary nutrition, health-related awareness, immunization, health check-up and referral services. These are provided through a network of so-called Anganwadi.
Anganwadi literally mean "courtyard shelters"; they are small multi-purpose infrastructures which are managed by local village authorities.
With a view to extend its support to the rural communities where most of our female workers live, the Michele Ferrero Entrepreneurial Project in India decided to build eight new Anganwadi, between 2019-2022, in villages around the Ferrero’s plant at Baramati.
To this purpose, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Ferrero India and the Pune District Council (Zilla Parishad) which will be responsible for the maintenance and management of such Anganwadi. The MOU details commitments and responsibilities of both parties as well as the criteria for the identification of the locations where the Ferrero Anganwadi will be built.
As a result of several field missions undertaken by a joint Ferrero-Zilla Parishad team, three villages, that will host the first three Anganwadi, were eventually selected. Before starting the excavation works, in accordance with local traditional customs, a propitiatory ceremony for the laying of the first stone was carried out by a Ferrero India delegation and local village authorities at Supe village, site of the first Ferrero Anganwadi.
The Michele Ferrero Entrepreneurial Project in Cameroon has focused its social and humanitarian initiatives on supporting the efforts of local government’s educational authorities to upgrade pre-school and primary school facilities.
In 2014, a new school block at the Cité Verte nursery school at Yaoundé was built and the entire premises of the school were renovated. In 2016 new classes for pupils were built at the Gado-Badzere refugee camp, on the border with Central African Republic (CAR). The camp hosts thousands of people most of whom took refuge in Cameroon to escape the war raging in CAR. Among them there were over 2,000 children, half of whom could not attend compulsory schooling.