Claude Marx, CEO of Lombard International Assurance, recently presented a cheque for €44,000 to Sophie Molitor, Director of SOS Villages d’Enfants Monde. This annual donation will be earmarked for the various SOS projects currently being supported by the company: three healthcare and education programmes in Sierra Leone, Niger and Tanzania and two programmes supporting the reconstruction efforts in the Philippines and Haiti.

It is now almost ten years since Lombard International Assurance began supporting SOS Villages d’Enfants Monde. It all began in 2006 with the funding of the construction of two houses in the SOS Children’s Village for 120 orphaned or abandoned children in Savannakhet in Laos. This was followed, from 2008 to 2013, by support for a family strengthening programme in Kolda, Senegal, a programme that aims to meet the essential needs of 500 children and to help guardians to cope on their journey to independence.

Currently, the company is providing financial assistance to SOS Children’s Village Makeni in Sierra Leone which provides a home to 115 children deprived of family ties as well as to a family strengthening programme in Dosso in Niger, providing 1,100 children and their families with material, medical and educational support. In addition to the significant annual donations from the company, employees have organised fundraising activities internally throughout the year (such as Casual Fridays) and collected €6,210 in aid of two programmes supporting the reconstruction effort in the Philippines and Haiti. In addition, given the long tradition of sporting charitable challenges within the company, the Luxembourg Marathon in particular, two employees this year participated in the second Kilimanjaro Challenge organised by SOS Villages d’Enfants Monde. This adventure enabled them to raise €8,466 in aid of 95 children from the SOS Nurseries and 45 adolescents from the SOS Youth Programme in Arusha, Tanzania.

At the cheque presentation, Sophie Molitor expressed her heartfelt thanks to Claude Marx and the entire Lombard International Assurance team for their invaluable support for SOS Villages d’Enfants Monde: ”We are delighted that Lombard International Assurance continues to support us year-on-year and that it provides such enthusiastic support for our projects that allow children to grow up in a protective and caring family environment and allow communities to sustainably recover from natural disasters.” In turn, Claude Marx praised the outstanding commitment of employees at the company and reiterated that it is “important for a socially responsible company to be involved in supporting quality projects over time with the hope of bringing tangible benefit to some of the world’s most vulnerable children and families.”