Sustainability Agenda

• In line with the Bank's sustainability agenda, Standard Chartered Bank Zimbabwe (SCBZ) has shifted from traditional philanthropy to ensuring that the Bank's core business contributes to addressing Zimbabwe's challenges.
• We have ensured that our lending is targeted at Zimbabwe's key growth sectors such as agriculture where our funding is benefiting more than 100,000 small scale farmers through our support to local corporates involved in contract farming activities.

Community Partnership

• The Bank continues to be involved in various community projects. Below are some examples:
• We run our annual Community Month activities from September to November focused on staff giving their time and effort to help the less privileged, rather than making material donations.
• Staff continue to participate in various employee volunteering activities such as cleaning public areas and facilitating educational workshops for women. Under the Employee Volunteering initiative, the Bank has given each staff member 3 days over and above the normal leave entitlement per year to go out into the community and make a difference. Going forward, the Bank plans to focus more on imparting literacy skills to the communities rather than manual activities such as cleaning.

Education & Youth Empowerment

Some students whom the Bank sponsored through high school are now at various universities in the country. The Bank will continue this sponsorship through partnership with the Education Ministry and World Vision.

Useful Information

Environment

Under the Environment pillar, SCBZ sponsors tree planting activities at schools and orphanages such as Mathew Rusike Children's Home, as our way of contributing towards efforts to raise awareness on climate change in our communities. In addition, the Bank sponsors the "500 million tree walk" every year in partnership with Friends of the Environment.