Daimler Financial Services Employees Build Homes in Indonesia and Romania

 

Some 60 employees of Daimler Financial Services in Singapore are joining up with Habitat for Humanity for the first time to build houses for needy families, while at the same time furthering their own teambuilding efforts and boosting their motivation.

Habitat for Humanity Deutschland and Daimler Financial Services AG have committed themselves to work together for two weekends on construction projects in Batam, Indonesia. On the weekends of November 27 to 29 and December 11 to 13, each company will send 30 of its employees from Singapore to help build two houses that are being financed through donations from Daimler employees. A total of 20 new houses will be built in Indonesia, thanks to the commitment of Daimler Financial Services. In this way the company is helping families in Batam that have an income of less than $2 a day and live in miserable conditions. Their plight is aggravated by recurring natural catastrophes such as the tsunami in 2004, which destroyed many families' homes.

Daimler Financial Services is also actively involved in similar projects in other countries. For example, from November 13 to 15 employees from Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Budapest (Hungary) will be meeting with the new employees of the Mercedes-Benz Financial Services office that is being set up in Bucharest (Romania). This group of approximately 50 people will travel to Pitesti, Romania, to build a house there for a needy family. It will be a good opportunity for them to get to know their new colleagues and experience the ones they already know in a completely new context.

"Both sides benefit from our building excursion," says Katrin Kaufmann, who is responsible for organizing building excursions for Habitat for Humanity. "On the one hand, poor families receive a simple but solid home, and on the other companies can put their sense of social responsibility into practice while at the same time promoting teamwork skills." Working together to make cement, dig the foundations of a house, or set doors and windows into their frames creates a more intense sense of togetherness than activities such as cooking, going climbing together, or other group activities that are currently considered very trendy, explains Kaufmann. Besides, she says, the construction excursion and the pleasure the employees feel when they've built a house together help to increase the employees' loyalty to the company and give a new boost to their motivation.

Additional information about Daimler Financial Services is available in the internet: http://www.daimler-financialservices.com