Around 71 000 pieces of school supplies were donated to help families living in difficult circumstances to start school in the Joy to Give! school supplies donation campaign organised by SPAR and the Charity Service of the Hungarian Order of Malta. Supporters also purchased donation cards worth 1.4 million HUF which will be used by the charity organisation to provide stationery, schoolbooks and and other school items to those in need. On top of this, SPAR donated a further 1 million HUF to the initiative.

The “Joy to Give!” (Adni Öröm!) school supply donation campaign organised by the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service and SPAR has been successfully completed. From 21 to 24 August 2024, volunteers of the charity service collected donated school supplies in all INTERSPAR stores throughout the country: shoppers in the hypermarkets bought and donated more than 71 000 pieces of school supplies – pencils, pens, pencil sets, schoolbook sets, pencil cases, drawing sets, school bags, gym bags – for the charity campaign. The collected school supplies were used by the staff of the charity organisation to create schoolbags and gift packs full of school supplies and to distribute them to families in need.

In the other part of the campaign, from 29 July to 1 September 2024, customers could also help with donation cards in 500, 1500, 3000, 5000 and 10 000 HUF denominations purchased in the SPAR online shop and the INTERSPAR stores. The total amount of 1.4 million HUF thus donated is also exchanged by the charity service for school supplies which will be distributed to children living in difficult circumstances and to children from families with multiple disadvantages attending the “Maltese” Schools. SPAR Hungary has matched the donations with an additional 1 million HUF to ensure that even more needy pupils can receive school supplies.

“For SPAR, social responsibility and supporting noble causes have been an integral part of the corporate culture for more than 30 years. Our strategic partner in this effort has long been the Charity Service of the Hungarian Order of Malta which strives to help disadvantaged people in all regions of the country. We have been organising the “Joy to Give!” campaign for the fourth year already, and I am pleased to say that we have once again been able to help families in difficult circumstances with a significant amount of school supplies. We are very grateful to all our customers, who have once again taken action and with their selfless support are helping many children to start school,” said Márk Maczelka, head of communications at SPAR Hungary.

“We would like to thank everyone who contributed with donations. The start of the school year often forces families in difficult circumstances to make bitter choices, and donations allow us to help them through this. With the fourth Joy to Give! back-to-school campaign, we are helping more than 1600 children  who will receive the donated school supplies in the first days of the school year, and some of these will be distributed later to replace any missing items,” added Tamás Romhányi, head of communications of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service.

For more information on the results of the donation campaign please visit the www.adniorom.hu website.

Our Eco-consciousness website has been relaunched, featuring:

1. a summary of our environmental solutions over the last decade and
2. we have set out our commitments (ESG) to the 17 UN SDG targets and added an 18th one, which highlights the importance of using alternative metrics other than money.

The page can be accessed by clicking here: www.ladybirdfarm.eu

Domestic companies are finding it increasingly difficult to make decisions in the ESG field, in the face of new regulations, binding deadlines and financial incentives. According to Gábor Szarvas, Head of Greenbors, most market players have the will to meet expectations and adapt to innovations. Many are also aware of the business potential of the new framework, but the expertise to implement it is also essential.

Szarvas says that as sustainability consultants specialising in real estate and buildings, we have a comprehensive understanding of the challenges of the built environment to operate more sustainably and the risks and benefits of domestic and international trends. This expertise and knowledge is clearly in increasing demand and demand from property developers, operators, financiers and other relevant companies. Thanks to increased enquiries and projects requiring increasingly diverse services, Greenbors has added 3 senior experts and several junior professionals in the last few months alone.

Senior energy consultant Máté Varga will strengthen Greenbors’ newly launched energy practice. Máté leads the building energy consultancy projects, which include both individual and complex tasks, from certified building energy certification to energy modelling. Andrea Nyilas, Senior Sustainability Consultant, is involved in the professional management and implementation of expert services for corporate ESG/sustainability reporting. She also coordinates projects for the development of carbon neutrality strategies and roadmaps, and the technical tasks of carbon footprint calculation and life cycle assessment (LCA) services. Csaba Lovász, as a consultant, is involved in the preparation of studies related to building assessments, climate adaptation and building-specific climate risk analysis and ESG reports.

With their involvement, Greenbors can provide an integrated ESG service covering all related topics in the real estate and construction sector. “With a surge of nearly 20 percent in headcount and an increasing demand for integrated services, mid-sized consulting firms like us have had to rethink our organizational structure and service portfolio. To do this, we integrated a professional organisation development manager into the management team in the person of Áron Jakab.” Gábor Szarvas believes that despite the general slowdown in the economy, the market growth of expert consultancies in the sustainable real estate segment could reach double digits in the coming years and that Greenbors is ready for this growth in the future.

There is increasing pressure on companies to take sustainability aspects into account and comply with the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Many companies will be required to submit a CSRD report as early as 2025, which will be a major challenge for most companies. To help you overcome these challenges, we have fresh programmes to help you.

Free CSRD Academy

With the launch of the CSRD Academy e-learning platform, our aim is to make the knowledge about sustainability regulations more understandable for everyone. Building a more sustainable business should not only be the responsibility of the CSRD report writer, but also of the management and other stakeholders. That’s why our free training platform allows anyone to deepen their knowledge, whether they want to learn more about dual materiality or other areas of CSRD.

You can access the material available on the e-learning platform here: CSRD Academy

CSRD Bootcamp and ESG-CSRD Preparatory Workshop

We launched the Hungarian ESG-CSRD Bootcamp for the second time, the international version of which is now available under the name CSRD Bootcamp. Bootcamp aims to provide companies with tools that can be used immediately, such as our full CSRD software or best practices based on feedback from first ESRS reporting. In addition to theoretical knowledge, the programme places a strong emphasis on practice, which is continuously coordinated by our international team of external and internal experts.

For a more detailed description of the bootcamp, please click here: CSRD Bootcamp

Anita Simon, ALTEO’s Deputy CEO for Sustainability and the Circular Economy, has been awarded the Manager of the Year for the Green Economy Special Award. The award, jointly presented by the Hungarian Association of Executives and Linde Gas Hungary Plc., was awarded for her commitment to sustainability and her innovative approach.

In an interview published in Remind Magazine, Anita Simon talks in detail about how she integrates environmental protection into ALTEO’s strategy and the challenges we face on the road to sustainable development.