Sansiri is recognized as UNICEF’s first Selected Partner in Thailand.
With 8 years of unwavering commitment to help children in need, Sansiri encourages Thai society to help pushing the child rights agenda and national policies for children.
UNICEF has recognized Sansiri as UNICEF’s first selected partner in Thailand, a result of its relentless efforts to help promoting child rights for the past 8 years. Sansiri is the first company from Thailand to be in the list of selected partners of UNICEF Thailand on UNICEF global website.
Sansiri expressed gratitude to UNICEF and all other partners for this recognition and the continued collaboration to create a sustainable foundation for realization of child rights in Thailand and beyond. Sansiri also highlighted their mission to promote child rights while encouraging the society to join forces in ensuring that child rights become part of the national policies.
2 November 2018 - UNICEF Thailand’s Representative Mr. Thomas Davin announced that “Sansiri is the first company from Thailand to be in the list of selected partners of UNICEF Thailand on UNICEF global website. This recognition acknowledges Sansiri’s earnest and consistent child-friendly policy which has the potential to lead to long-term changes for sustainable development for children. We sincerely hope that this would inspire other businesses to adopt child-friendly policies for sustainable growth of the society and businesses themselves as well.”
Since 2013, Sansiri was honored to have participated in over 8 international events, sharing the stage with UN’s representatives on many occasions, and has received many Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) awards in national, regional and international level. Sansiri is proud to be included in the list of selected partners where 20 leading global organizations, such as Louis Vuitton, IKEA, ING, Gucci and Unilever, etc are also in the list. This recognition would also benefit Thailand’s international image for promoting child rights.
Sansiri PLC’s CEO Mr. Apichart Chutrakul said, “Sansiri has had a long-term commitment to help children. It was an honour to collaborate with UNICEF along with other partners to constantly bring positive changes to children’s well-being throughout the past 8 years. We have initiated over 14 projects to help protect children’s lives and rights and improve their quality of life, focusing on health, education and sports. We also provided aid to children not only in Thailand but around the globe.”
In the past Sansiri and UNICEF collaborated for the IODINE PLEASE Project in 2010, to address Iodine deficiency disease which affected Thai people for the last 50 years. Sansiri and UNICEF worked with partners to create a strong voice to highlight the issue and successfully advocated the government to come up with a new law that helped solve the iodine deficiency problems in Thailand. Thereafter, it became mandatory to add iodine in all consumption salts.
The Child Rights Project, based on Sansiri’s ‘No child labor policy’ in 2010 was marked with a formal announcement of not having any child labour in any of their construction sites. This initiative was further scaled up to include more than 150 Sansiri’s allied construction partners to sign the agreement to eventually end the existence of child labor in allied businesses. This initiative also included extension of aid to children in construction sites with “The Good Space – Safe Space for Children” project. The Good Space Project in 2012 was another significant collaboration project with UNICEF to allocate “Safe Space for Children” or “The Good Space” within the construction sites. This allowed children within the construction area have equal access to safe living environment, education and health services. Based on the Good Space model developed with UNICEF, Sansiri has worked with Sansiri’s construction partners to allocate more than 40 safe spaces for children in 13 provinces.
According to 2015 statistics from Kids Home Development Network, more than 700 children had joined the Good Space project every year. Among them, 50 children from Sansiri’s Good Space have received education at Wat Jed Yod school in Chiang Mai as planned.
The crucial elements that allowed Sansiri to maintain its aspiration as a child-friendly organization were the collaboration received from both allied partners and its employees, their mutual awareness, understanding, knowledge regarding child rights, and the significance of providing ‘equal opportunities’ for every child to have a better life.
“Sansiri will continue with its commitments and work to help children in all possible aspects. We will encourage other organizations to support children through business principles and practices. This will bring us sustainable development for both business as well as the children. We really want to promote more awareness around child rights to change the society for the better and then to push it further to be integrated in the national policies.” said Apichart.
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