Social Commitment

• BASF as a responsible neighbor
• Contribution to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals

Our social commitment helps to achieve the U.N. SDGs. As part of our social engagement strategy, we focus on projects that will have a lasting impact on specific target groups and offer learning opportunities for participating cooperation partners and BASF. For instance, we have supported Wissensfabrik, an initiative of German businesses to promote education and entrepreneurship, for over 10 years.

As a responsible neighbor, we strive to create a livable community for our sites’ neighbors, employees and their families. In Germany, community engagement in Ludwigshafen and the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region includes strengthening participation and integration of disadvantaged groups as well as promoting research and discovery. It is particularly important to us that we work together with our partners to increase the effectiveness of individual measures. In the project #WirGestaltenSchule, for example, we are working together with partners to improve education equality. We promote cooperation between nonprofit organizations with the Gemeinsam Neues schaffen program.

We foster social integration, particularly of low-achieving young people and refugees, with programs such as Start in den Beruf and Start Integration. In 2019, 151 young people in the BASF Training Verbund participated in these two programs in cooperation with partner companies in the Rhein-Neckar metropolitan region. The goal is to prepare participants for an apprenticeship within one year, and ultimately secure the long-term supply of qualified employees for BASF and in the region as a whole. Since being launched at the end of 2015, BASF’s Start Integration program has supported around 380 refugees with a high probability of being granted the right to remain in Germany, helping to integrate them into the labor market. We spent around €3.4 million on the BASF Training Verbund in 2019.

Two other examples of BASF’s impact-driven social engagement are its activities in India and Indonesia. In Mauk, Indonesia, we initiated a school project in cooperation with local authorities and the nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity. The targeted use of digital media improves teaching and learning conditions for young people and helps to modernize and improve access to education. At our Dahej and Mangalore sites in India, we support projects with a focus on clean water, sanitation and education. For example, we sponsored the construction of toilets and an accompanying educational program to strengthen community awareness. Better hygiene and sanitation help prevent the spread of disease.

We also aim to create long-term value for BASF and society with new business models and cross-industry partnerships. Our Starting Ventures program helps people with precarious livelihoods to improve their income-earning opportunities and their quality of life. At the same time, the program provides access to new markets and strengthens our contribution to reaching the SDGs.

In the area of international development work, we support the BASF Stiftung, an independent nonprofit organization, through donations to its projects with various U.N. organizations. In 2019, BASF supported a project spearheaded by the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to construct a youth center for young Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh with its annual year-end donation campaign to the BASF Stiftung. In total, €359,987.00 was raised for the UNICEF project from donations by the employees of participating German Group companies and BASF.

The BASF Group spent a total of €32.0 million supporting projects in 2019; we donated 42.5% of this amount (2018: €38.4 million, of which 39% were donations).

BASF Group donations, sponsorship and own projects in 2019^a