Working with local communities

Charitable giving has always been part of Bupa’s business philosophy. We are proud that Bupa regularly exceeds Business in the Community’s benchmark of contributing at least one percent of pre-tax profits to charity.

Community Connections

Bupa invests over £800,000 a year into our Community Connections initiative. This goes towards ensuring we identify and address some of the health, education and wellbeing needs of the communities in which we operate.

In celebration of Bupa’s 60th anniversary in 2007, 60 volunteers helped refurbish an orphanage in northern Thailand over a period of six weeks. The orphanage, Sarnelli House, is home to 126 children with HIV/AIDS, or orphaned by the disease.
In 2007, Bupa employees in the UK volunteered more than 25,000 hours, with 11,000 of these helping to improve education for over 28,000 school children across the country.
In 2008, Bupa piloted a new healthy eating volunteering programme, Activ-eat, which is currently being rolled out in schools the UK during 2009.
Colleagues in Miami (US) took part in their first team community challenge and employees in Boston (US) set up a Book Buddies programme to help school children with their reading.

Visit the Community Connections website

Community Spirit week

Every year, nearly 300 UK Bupa Care Homes invite local older people from their communities into their homes to take part in activities to help tackle the issue of social isolation. In 2008, 218 care homes opened their doors as part of Bupa’s Community Spirit Week and 259 care homes took part in Communi-tea Week.

Sanitas 'You decide' project

In 2008, Sanitas, our Spanish business, rolled out its employee volunteer programme, focusing on helping people with a range of disabilities. 422 volunteers have been involved, devoting some 700 hours of their free time. The Sanitas ‘You decide’ project gave employees the chance to donate €1 from their monthly wage for a say in how the funds should be spent, as well as suggesting activities and projects into which these donations should be channelled

Music4health programme

Bupa Australia’s music4health programme, sponsored by MBF and in partnership with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, sees musicians perform short concerts in hospitals with a view to not only create positive health outcomes for patients but to also entertain them, their carers and hospital employees.

Match funding

As well as helping employees to support their chosen charities by encouraging volunteering through Community Connections, Bupa matches all amounts personally raised. In 2007, we matched £443,166 raised by employees, taking the total given to charity to £886,332.

Bupa-sponsored events

Bupa is the proud sponsor of the Great Run series, incorporating the HBA Australia run and the world's largest half marathon, Great North Run in Newcastle, UK among others. Our relationship with the Great Runs programme illustrates our passion for positive health and signifies that we are as much about wellness as illness.

All of these events included hundreds of Bupa people fund-raising as well as celebrities and professional athletes. Overall, participants raised £8.7 million for charity in 2007.

In Hong Kong last year we contributed $300,000 in sponsorship of the Orbis Walkathon.

In Australia, a variety of sponsorship events saw us contribute over AUS$1 million.

Find out more about Bupa’s sponsored events