Sony 2007 Annual Report Download - page 58

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“Someone Needs You,”
Sony’s employee volunteer initiative
Sony Student Project Abroad (China)
UNICEF children’s digital photo project
Social Contributions
The Sony Group has a policy of contributing its expertise to local communities in regions
around the world where it operates according to the needs of the times and the communities
themselves. We make effective use of our technologies, products and business activities
and the talents and efforts of employees in the service of these communities.
Sony Group companies and offices and Sony-supported charitable foundations in Japan,
the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia sponsor a range of educational, science,
music, digital film and photography programs suited to the host region. We also provide
opportunities for individual employees to participate in volunteer activities that benefit their
communities. In the period under review, approximately 23,000 Sony Group employees
participated in these activities.
For the Next Generation
We continue to undertake a variety of programs under the banner “For the Next Generation,”
which strives to provide youth with educational opportunities and contribute to the creation
of a sustainable society. During the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007, the Sony Foundation
for Education sponsored the “Wellspring of Science Inspiration—Children’s Schoolhouse of
Dreams” program led by Dr. Hideki Shirakawa, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The program encourages children to learn through nature. In the arts realm, the Sony Music
Foundation supported a program to cultivate appreciation for world-class music in young
people. It sponsored performances of Les Paladins, billed as an “opera fantastique,” and
organized related youth-oriented workshops that coincided with these performances.
In other parts of Asia, we launched the Sony Student Project Abroad (China) to help foster
a cultural understanding of Japan among Chinese high school students. During the period,
we invited 20 high school students from Beijing and Shanghai to visit Tokyo, stay in Sony
employee homes and interact with their Japanese counterparts under the theme “Raising
Environmental Awareness.”
To complement our prior emphasis on educational activities, during the period under review,
we also collaborated with international institutions and NGOs in developing nations to conduct
activities designed to raise awareness among the general population of the actual state of
poverty and disease epidemics in some developing nations, in line with the idea that
understanding real conditions is the first step toward helping improve those conditions. For
example, we supplied digital cameras and peripheral equipment to the children participating
in a UNICEF-organized digital photo project in earthquake-devastated areas of Pakistan.
The project allowed children to document their lives from their own perspectives, and was
undertaken with the aim of contributing to rebuilding efforts, while at the same time fostering
creativity. Photographs from the project were exhibited at UNICEF’s headquarters in New
York and in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, as well as at the Sony Building and Sony mediage
in Tokyo.
©UNICEF/HQ06-1233/Asad Zaidi