Hyundai Oilbank’s 1 Percent Sharing Foundation has delivered 6,000 cook stoves to a remote village in Mandalay, Myanmar. (Photos: Hyundai Oilbank)

Hyundai Oilbank’s 1 Percent Sharing Foundation has donated 6,000 cook stoves to a remote village in Mandalay, Myanmar. The donation is designed to help residents in the remote village of Myanmar ease their indoor air pollution.

Cooking food with a stove could reduce cooking time and firewood use by about 40 percent, compared to their conventional cooking method: burning firewood in a hole dug in the ground, thus emitting less harmful smoke.

The foundation is expected to gain some carbon credits from the Myanmar government in recognition of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Proceeds from the selling of the carbon credits will be reinvested into supplying of additional cook stoves and other projects to promote local residents’ convenience.

Hyundai Oilbank executives and staff have been contributing 1 percent of their monthly pay to help needy neighbors since November 2011. Hyundai Oilbank became the first large company in Korea where executives and staff chipped in for the cause. 

The union has been participating in the sharing movement, proposed by management, thus greatly contributing to spreading donation movement in Korean society.

Currently, more than 95 percent of Hyundai Oilbank executives and staff have been participating in the sharing movement. Donations of congratulation and condolence money, prize money, and lecture fees have become part of their daily lives.

An employee with Hyundai Oilbank cooks food with a cook stove, donated by Hyundai Oilbank’s 1 Percent Sharing Foundation.

Staff members from Hyundai Oilbak’s subsidiaries and their cooperative firms have donated money to the 1 Percent Sharing Foundation. As a result, the foundation was honored with receiving the prime minister’s award at the Korea Sharing Grand Prix in October.

The foundation has been actively conducting projects targeting the needy and organizations in Korea and abroad, including the “1 Percent Sharing Meal Room” for underprivileged elderly and “Heating Oil of Love” for those in the low-income bracket during winter and overseas education support program targeting developing countries.

The 1 Percent Sharing Meal Room is a project to provide annual food costs worth 50 million to welfare centers, which have been selected among welfare facilities with more than 300 elderly people.

The foundation operates seven 1 Percent Sharing Meal Rooms across the nation, while spending 500 million won annually to supply heating fuel and repair heating facilities to help low-come families in winter.

The foundation is engaging in projects to improve educational facilities in remote districts of foreign countries. The foundation set up a kindergarten and primary school in Vietnam in 2013 and 2014, respectively. It dedicated a children’s library in Vietnam in 2017 and a primary school in Nepal in 2018.

The foundation has encouraged executives and staff to participate in volunteer activities so they experience the reward of sharing and joy on top of contributing money.

It is implementing a matching grant in which it donates 10,000 won in kind in return for each executive or staff member’s work for volunteering activities per hour.

Executives and staff members’ cumulative volunteering time has risen to at about 60,000 hours since 2014 when the grant was inaugurated.