Responsible retailing and community involvement are high on SPAR Austria’s agenda and deeply rooted in its corporate culture. SPAR Austria is actively engaging in CSR initiatives at national, regional and local levels. Here we highlight some recent examples which underline the diversity of the causes being supported.

SPAR Austria and UNIQA support ‘Save the Child’ charity

In early 2017, UNIQA health insurer and SPAR launched a campaign ‘Every move counts’ promoting physical exercise by employees. Upon reaching 50,000 measured kilometres, the two partners would donate €10,000 to children in need. At the end of May 2017, employees of both organisations had already covered 52,968km across 52 different sports and burnt 3.7 million calories; quickly achieving the target. The most popular sports were running, walking and cycling.

Using this donation, Save the Child will be able to support families and children living in physically or socially difficult circumstances throughout Austria. The aid ranges from disability work, caring for socially vulnerable children, fostering through to individual support for families in need.

SPAR Upper Austria sponsors Special Olympics

SPAR Upper Austria is a premium sponsor of the 7^th Austrian Special Olympics, which will be organised in Vöcklabruck in 2018, bringing together 2,500 athletes. “We aim to raise approximately €10,000 through the sale of specially branded sparkling water in all of our SPAR, EUROSPAR and INTERSPAR stores, in cooperation with the family business ‘Starzinger’. The money will be donated to the association ‘Building Bridges’ which is organising the event,” said Jakob Leitner, Managing Director of the SPAR Marchtrenk office.

In more than 300 SPAR stores and on SPAR flyers throughout Upper Austria, awareness will be created in the months leading up to the event.

Two SPAR Tyrol stores donate to local charities  

As part of the opening of the new SPAR store Reinisch in Steinach am Brenner, a donation of €2,500 was presented to Georg Schärmer, Director of the charity ‘Caritas Innsbruck’. “The donated money was generated by a corporate promotion with the company Ölz”, explains Dr. Christof Rissbacher, Managing Director of SPAR Tyrol and Salzburg.  The donation supports people in need and families in the Wipptal region.

Within the corporate social responsibility programme of SPAR Austria, the donation of some funds is managed by individual stores; in this case the EUROSPAR in Kufstein Tyrol, chose the local food bank, donating €1,200 recently. Socially disadvantaged individuals and families from Kufstein and surrounding areas can purchase food at sharply reduced prices through this charity.