Roche’s Children Walk is Roche’s largest annual employee engagement and philanthropic event. — Photo Roche

Roche in Vietnam has organised an internal walk challenge titled “20 million steps for the children of Viet Nam” to mark the 20th anniversary of Roche’s Children Walk globally.

Participating in the challenge, employees can choose to walk everywhere at any time to contribute their steps to the program. With the support of nearly 200 employees across the country, more than 21 million steps were collected. As a result, VND200 million was contributed to the local CSR fund.

To further support children in need, Roche Vietnam also organised direct donations and flea markets which helped to increase the total fund to VND358 million, three times higher than the previous year. Roche will match all employee contributions 1:1. The total sum will be divided to support underprivileged children around the world and in Viet Nam.

Lennor Carrillo, General Director of Roche Pharma Vietnam said, “Together with colleagues around the world, through the legally independent global charity Roche Employee Action and Charity Trust (Re&Act), we are able to support children’s projects in which we partner with organizations like UNICEF, Child’s Dream and the Roger Federer Foundation. Millions of children especially in developing countries have benefited from new schools, computer labs, scholarships, healthy food programmes and much more, including Viet Nam.”

Since the first company Walk in 2003, more than 294,000 Roche employees have raised over CHF22 million in donations for children’s projects around the world. Through Re&Act, the funds have been channeled into projects related to education, nutrition, primary healthcare and social development in developing countries. — VNS