NANJING, China, June 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Suning Group ("Suning" or "the Company"), a leading commercial conglomerate in China, has built another "Suning Hope" elementary school in a rural county in central China’s Hubei province on the eve of Children’s Day, as part of its efforts to help bring China one step closer to poverty eradication.
Suning has built 74 such elementary schools and dormitories across 11 provinces in China, helping to solve the issues of basic education and housing for more than 100,000 school-age kids in the country’s rural areas.
One of “Suning Hope” elementary school
Zhang Jindong, Founder and Chairman of Suning, has previously said in December 2020 that Suning pledges to continue deepening its corporate social responsibility and pour more efforts into charity work. In recent years, Suning has leveraged its advantages in corporate resources, channels, platforms, and data, fully engaging in targeted poverty alleviation initiatives.
As early as October 2011, Suning was one of the first companies to participate in a poverty-lifting campaign launched by China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation that aims to aid students in rural areas who face housing problems.
In December 2011, Suning launched its school building construction project to build or improve the school buildings and dormitories in rural areas. The Company renovated its first school in Ninglang county, a rural county under the administration of Lijiang city, Yunnan province. The school at the time had about 500 students, mostly those in ethnic minority groups, who needed to walk for almost a day from their homes in the mountains to the school. Living at school had become a pressing necessity, but the dorm, which came with serious safety issues with cracked walls, could only house 20 students.
After careful design and construction, Suning in 2012 built a brand-new dormitory on the campus of the school. In the past decade, Suning has completed such construction projects at over 70 schools.
In addition to school building construction, Suning has integrated its staff volunteer program with the project, and has sent volunteers to help children in rural areas such as Yunnan and Guizhou provinces with their extracurricular activities.
Suning has so far donated more than RMB2.3 billion (US$360 million) to targeted poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, with RMB850 million going towards special initiatives.
Specifically, the Company has donated funds and equipment to 388 impoverished counties across more than 20 provinces Suning has built 170 Suning bridges; 160 Suning Dream Centers, namely multimedia classrooms consist of multimedia teaching equipment and books; 74 Suning school buildings; 20 roads and countless other public welfare projects. Moreover, its charity football program covers over 300 schools, while its Dream Caravan-Suning project to bring learning to students across the country has already reached 60 schools, carrying out dozens of educational courses.
In a July 2020 assessment of Suning.com—the listed company and a Fortune Global 500 company owned by Suning Group on its ESG performance by the American investment research firm MSCI, Suning.com achieved a ranking of AA, exceeding the performance of 85% of the evaluated global companies.
About Suning Group
Founded in 1990, Suning Group has two listed subsidiaries domestically and internationally. Suning Group is ranked third among Chinese private sector companies and serves nearly 700 million users globally. Committed to its mission of leading industrial advancements that create a high quality life for all, Suning strives to be a socially-conscious corporation and leading retail service provider. Suning focuses its efforts on retail business, innovative Smart Retail, empowering industrial development and serving social entrepreneurship. The subsidiary, Suning.com, has been listed on the Fortune Global 500 for years.
