Our organization believes that an active involvement of business is needed to stabilize a social situation. It must be strong and looking ahead with confidence companies. In our case it is children without parental care and families at risk who need help. We are working to prevent children from entering baby homes, children’s homes and social shelters. You know, every child is dreaming of a loving reliable family.
There are two contrary views on a business social responsibility.
The first point of view is that business is not obliged to be involved in charity and to settle social issues. All it must do is to provide jobs and pay taxes. Eugene Gontmakher, the Head of Social Policy Department of Institute of Economics of Russian Academy of Sciences says: “All these donations, hither and thither – all that is coming away. In fact, though may be it sounds bad from the social point of view, but it is being put into the background. On a large scale, business doesn’t have to concern itself with it ”.¹
But there is also the other point of view shared by most transnational and western companies. For them charity and the necessity of supporting those in need is not only the rule but is also strategically grounded. “It is a situation when a company invests in the development of social infrastructure in the region of its presence to ease the social tension and provide normal operating conditions for business”.² But providing stable operating conditions, a company does reap large profit. Profit may be purely humane. “It is a desire to live in a normal country, […], grief experienced in your own life which teaches to feel compassion for those who had suffered the similar grief. We won’t talk about this kind of profit. It is called the purport of life”.³
In this respect, the more pleasant it was for us to have known about the desire of employees of “Uzhno-Uralskogo mezhregionalnogo upravleniya okhrani OAO “Gazprom” to help us collect developing games, books and clothes for children taking part in Children Want to Live at Home and Disseminating Experience of Urgent Accommodation for Vulnerable Mothers project in Sverdlovsk region.
¹ Dengi i blagotvoritelnost Magazine, #71, 2009, New rules of play or who owes to whom? - p.78
² Istoriya doveriya v nedoveritelnyie vremena. History of Russian charity./O.P. Alekseyeva. – M.:Eksmo, 2008. - p.75
³ Ibid
