On this World AIDS Day 2008, Standard Chartered Bank is calling on businesses and organisations to join in the global fight against HIV and AIDS. The Bank’s Living with HIV programme aims to reduce the number of new HIV infections through effective education to enable people to make safe lifestyle choices.
Through the Clinton Global Initiative, Standard Chartered has pledged to educate one million people on HIV and AIDS by 2010. This is being achieved through an HIV workplace education programme called Living with HIV that educates Standard Chartered staff and other companies on the issues around the epidemic. Hundreds of staff volunteers, called ‘HIV Champions’, have been trained to run the education programmes across 50 countries.
Standard Chartered is offering these education tools and the expertise of HIV Champions free of charge to partner companies who wish to implement HIV education programmes within their own organisations. Major global organisations such as AIESEC, Virgin Group and Crown Worldwide have already joined.
In the past 25 years, over 30 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses. There are currently more than 33 million people living with the HIV virus and there are 6,800 new infections daily.
David Cutting, CEO, Standard Chartered Botswana, said: “It is absolutely critical for us as a company to help educate people on HIV and AIDS for the sake of the communities where we do business. We invite other companies to get in touch with us and utilise our HIV Champions to help build education programmes for their staff.”
Living with HIV is part of Standard Chartered’s Sustainability strategy, through which it aims to contribute positively to the communities where it operates, focusing on HIV and AIDS education, environmental protection, and assisting the visually impaired through “Seeing is Believing”
