Mihaela Moga & Bogdan Diaconu

Company: Banca Transilvania S.A., a joint stock company
Banca Transilvania is the key driver of Banca Transilvania Financial Group.

Number of employees: over 6,000 employees.

Brief details of company
Banca Transilvania started in Cluj-Napoca, 14 years ago, as an initiative of some businessmen of Cluj. The main idea was to create a local bank, a Cluj brand.
Banca Transilvania is today one of the most important financial institutions in Romania, ranked among top 5 banks, and a blue chip of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. With a share market of 5,5%, Banca Transilvania is one of the most dynamic banks in Romania, being recognised as an important player on the Romanian banking market, with a nationwide presence.

In 1997 it became the first Romanian bank listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Banca Transilvania is present in all the important economic centres in Romania, with more than 500 offices and agencies.

The four main business lines of the company: financial retail, SMEs, Corporate and Medical Division rely on dedicated people both at branch and headquarter level, offering specialized products and services to its over 1,000,000 customers.

Banca Transilvania has also five sub-brands: BT Café™, BT Golf Cup™, Academia BT™, Clujul Are Suflet™ and Clubul Intreprinzatorului Roman™

Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy

The company’s CSR strategy is focused on two lines: entrepreneurship and social investment. The Transilvania Bank Group’s mission is to come closer to the communities where its activities take place and to support the Romanian entrepreneurship spirit.

1. Entrepreneurship: entrepreneurship support, entrepreneurship education

- “BT Academy” / Academia BT: “We are the Bank of Entrepreneurs”
Created in 2005, this is a center for professional formation and development of the Group’s employees. Its main purpose is to develop and make the best use of the human and professional potential of the Group’s employees.

The Group believes in the Romanian entrepreneurship spirit and has the intention to support the entrepreneurs of the Romanian business environment.

- “The Club of the Romanian Entrepreneur” / Clubul Intreprinzatorului Roman: the mission of this club is to help the Romanian entrepreneurs explore and decide upon the opportunities offered by the nowadays business environment

2. Social / community investment

The social programmes of BT include: community marketing, volunteering, donations, patronage and the projects developed by three corporate foundations: “Transilvania” (sprijinirea spitalelor), “Cluj City has a soul” / “Clujul Are Suflet”, and “BT Charity” / Caritate BT.
In order to establish the fields that need support, BT has taken into consideration aspects like: the needs of the community the priorities of the Group’s main stakeholders and its business principles. Up until now, BT has offered support for: education, health, sports, environment, social causes, etc.

The company’s key-stakeholders: employees, shareholders, clients, partners, the local communities, and the public authorities.

The main social programmes are “You choose, BT gets involved / Tu alegi, Banca Transilvania se implica” and “Cluj City has a Soul” (See Description of the CSR practice)

(1) “You choose, BT gets involved”
- initiated in March 2006
The project was developed in Alba Iulia, Bistrita, Deva si Sibiu, cities where representatives of the bank and of the public authorities suggested three projects (per city) that needed financial support. It was the local citizens who got to choose one single project for each city.
- more than 68,000 citizens expressed their preferences for the community projects
- budget: 280,000 euros

(2) “Cluj City Has a Soul” Programme
The programme “Cluj City has a soul” was launched at the end of May 2007 and was meant to be a groundbreaker of local social involvement. Its activities are still in process.The programme is managed by the “Cluj City Has a Soul”, a corporate foundation.

The project materialized in one day care center, where young people coming from deprived families get support in their development following a personalized intervention plan. It is a long-term programme given the fact that, each year, at least 250-300 young persons will follow essential educational modules, specific for their age, with future benefits.
The programme needs not only the involvement of the local community, but also specialized intervention. Therefore, the entire activity is to be developed with the direct support of the Romanian Foundation for Children, Community and Family, a foundation with an experience of more than ten years in the work with young people. It offers social services to poor families (the European poverty limit is 4 euros per family member) where the number of children is superior to that of adults.

The programme has three main targets:
1. Adolescents who do not go to school
Specific activities:

- initial evaluation of needs and interests, possibilities of personal development / social and professional integration;
- group or individual vocational counseling (so that each young person found their best suited solutions);
- educational / professional integration.

2. Adolescents who go to school
Specific activities:

- initial evaluation of needs and interests, possibilities of personal development / social and professional integration;
- group or individual vocational counseling (so that they can continue their studies and get professional training, counseling in personal skills development)
- individual psychological counseling;
- group sessions for personal development;
- material support.

3. Young people who graduated from school
Specific activities:

- initial evaluation of needs and interests, possibilities of personal development / social and professional integration;
- group or individual vocational counseling (in order to find a job);
- individual psychological counseling;
- group sessions for personal development.

The project materialized in one day care center, where young people coming from deprived families get support in their development following a personalized intervention plan. It is a long-term programme given the fact that, each year, at least 250-300 young persons will follow essential educational modules, specific for their age, with future benefits.

The programme needs not only the involvement of the local community, but also specialized intervention. Therefore, the entire activity is to be developed with the direct support of the Romanian Foundation for Children, Community and Family, a foundation with an experience of more than ten years in the work with young people. It offers social services to poor families (the European poverty limit is 4 euros per family member) where the number of children is superior to that of adults.

Beneficiaries of the programme
- young people that have not social and economic opportunities: young people who come from deprived social categories, especially those who get to adolescence and do not get along with their parents
- the local authority and the entire local community

Problem addressed
The lack of social and economic opportunities for young people:
young people who come from deprived social categories, especially those who get to adolescence and do not get along with their parents, face difficulties in the way they usually relate to others.

General context:
- the lack of professional and economic opportunities for young people
- increasing number of unemployed young people

Particular context:
- one of the most serious problem children from deprived families face when they reach adulthood is finding a job that can give them the chance to be independent and provide for themselves.

Purpose of intervention
Social and occupational inclusion of disadvantaged people: material support, and vocational and psychological counseling for young people from deprived families in Cluj.

Steps of implementation

The first step: gathering support signatures from the Cluj people
-two months after the programme was launched, the BT managed to gather 60,000 support signatures from people in Cluj; this was possible with the help of 100 volunteers; other 5000 signatures were sent online, on the programme’s web site. The intention is that, in time, these signatures be transformed into financial contributions of the business community in Cluj, in order to find a solution of these major problem of deprived young people of the community. Among those who joined the project there were: companies, students and the local press, who wished to volunteer in order to gather more signatures. More than that, a big part of them expressed their intention to get involved in the next steps of the programme, through concrete actions.
- the official web site of the project, clujularesuflet.ro, proposes online permanent communication with the community in Cluj and many others.

The second step - the center of the foundation, where:
people aged 14-18 can get access to information, programmes of personal and professional formation (educational programmes and mentoring, professional training, pedagogical and social assistance; a part of the young persons can also live at the center for a certain period of time, until they manage to get a job and live on their own).

Resources required
- financial resources
- vocational and career counseling
- psychological counseling and social assistance
- trainers and mentors

Impact: results, one year after the center was opened:

- 550 adolescents were informed about the existence of the center;
- 7 of the 65 adolescents who presented the risk of school abandonment managed to successfully finish the school year;
- 4 young persons who had abandoned school started again going to school, in order to get a professional qualification;
- 11 adolescents continued their education and went to high school, professional school or university;
- 6 young people followed a professional re-qualification programme;
- 45 young people were legally employed during January – November 2008.

Critical issues
- the lack of research concerning different related areas: the economic impact of the social changes in the developing countries, social problems of deprived families living in urban communities;
- the lack of Government policies and long-term programmes for social inclusion of marginal people.

Benefits
- closer relationships with the local communities
- branding: “Banca Transilvania” and “Clujul are suflet” are now an well-known brands, not just in the local area but nationally
- many social relationships
- social and professional inclusion
- improving the social climate of the local comunity, improving lives of the marginal young people in the community

Conclusion
To design an effective model of corporate social programme is important to point out all factors that relate business with its social environment. The basic idea is that a better social environment for local companies, particularly for banks, is crucial for a sustainable development of companies.

So, the question is: How could we improve the social climate of our local communities so that our company have a sustainable development?

- social partnerships are crucial for a better approach of these social problems
- public-private partnerships make such a programme have a larger social impact
- partnerships with education institutions make such a programme more effective.

Source
- bancatransilvania.ro
- clujularesuflet.ro
- For a description of all factors concerning the relationship between business and its social environment, See “SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT AND BUSINESS”, by Oleh Djamaludin Ancok.