Commercial practices with a public welfare mindset

 

Sun Lijun, Partner of Alibaba and President of Alibaba Foundation

 
"China is taking part in the global sustainable development with the responsibility of a great power, an unprecedented positive attitude and innovative practice. Alibaba is willing to apply inclusive technologies and platforms to contribute to China’s power for global sustainable development.”

On September 10, 2019, Jack Ma resigned as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alibaba and devoted himself to his favorite public welfare undertakings. In addition to Alibaba, Jack Ma has many other titles, and "SDG Advocate" is one of them. Jack Ma is the advocator of the SDGs, and Alibaba is the practitioner of the SDGs. The 75 projects initiated by Alibaba employees have fully benchmarked 17 SDGs. Although we had never initiated these projects to response to SDGs, we can always find the content corresponding to SDGs in the process of business development. All of this comes from Alibaba's commonweal gene that has been integrated into its mission since its inception. Over the past 20 years, public welfare has always been the core of Alibaba's economic responsibility. Alibaba devotes three thousandths of its annual business revenue to public welfare undertakings, which has spawned phenomenal public welfare models rooted in business.
 

 

 
Our poverty relief strategy helps poor counties end poverty and then realize rural revitalization by imparting methods to develop themselves and providing support projects. From December 2017 to June 2019, in the one and a half years since the establishment of Alibaba Poverty Relief Fund, the total sales volume of national poverty-stricken counties in Alibaba platform reached 110 billion yuan. Alibaba green planet program empowers environmental protection with the power of technology. Ants Forest of Alipay has been innovating in public participation in environmental protection. Up to April 2019, more than 100 million trees have been planted.

We pay attention to rural education and vocational education to train talents for the sustainable development of poor areas. As of June 2019, the rural education program has directly influenced more than 80,000 teachers and principals, and more than 1 million students.

 
 

We have launched the information accessibility service, allowing more than 17,000 visually impaired people to open stores on Taobao, and 597,000 visually impaired people to enjoy the convenience of shopping on Taobao and Tmall with their "ears". "Model mother" public welfare project helps self-improvement and self-reliance mothers start businesses. As of June 2019, a total of 18,200 women have received e-commerce training, 10,667 people gains jobs or started business. We worked with the Ministry of Public Security to build a "Reunion System" to crack down children abduction. As of September 5, 2019, we have released 4,191 pieces of information on missing children, recovered 4,102 missing children, with a recovery rate of 98%. The project, as the experience of China's science and technology in combating trafficking, has been recommended to the world twice by the United Nations. We invested 10 million dollars to set up the Africa Young Entrepreneur Fund. Together with the public welfare foundation, The PARADISE, we set up the "Protected Area Ranger Award Fund in Africa", which will last for 10 years. In September 2019, we released the first Hunger Map Live in the United Nations General Assembly to improve the efficiency of international humanitarian assistance.
 

 
 

"Commercial practices with a public welfare mindset" turn business into the biggest public welfare carrier. We will parallel the business development with social problem solutions and make it promote technological progress and model innovation. We always believe that when responsibility is born in the business model, enterprises will also reap the ability of sustainable development. This is what Alibaba insists on: help others and make yourself better.

(The Chinese version of this article is published on China Sustainability Tribune)
(Images in this article are from the Internet)