Corporate Social Responsibility

At DWS, we are taking greater action to embed ESG into our entire value chain, ensuring that we put sustainability at the heart of everything we do both as a fiduciary investor and as a corporate citizen.

This is why DWS is committed to aligning its business activities, including its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy to helping the UN achieve its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Therefore the strategic focus of our social engagement addresses important issues such as tackling climate change and resolving social inequalities.

The aid programmes for the charities presented on this page, form the beginning of our social commitment as a stand-alone asset manager. We will continue to expand on this and also offer our employees the opportunity to actively participate through corporate volunteering.

Our Social Engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic 

For the first time since our IPO – and therefore as a publicly listed asset manager –
we have implemented a DWS-owned aid programme, to give back to the community and support those in need.

The majority of our EUR 1 million corporate donation was shared among charities that have been specifically set up to prevent hunger, helping to feed thousands of hungry people across India, Germany, Spain, the US and the UK. These charities include Acción Contra el Hambre (Action Against Hunger, Spain), The Akshaya Patra Foundation (in India), Feeding Britain, The Whitechapel Mission (UK), as well as the German food banks “Frankfurter Tafel”, “Berliner Tafel” and ”Kölner Tafel”. Another major donation was made in Germany to the children’s aid organization “Die Arche”  (The Ark).

 

In addition, the donations we have made are not only being used to support the most vulnerable during the pandemic, but to also fund longer-term solutions so that we can prevent chronic hunger in the future. For example, our donations have been used to provide hygienic care for children and their families at a refugee camp in Syria, as well as to assist an organization in London, who run a dedicated bus, which provides food to low income families. In Frankfurt we have financed a refrigerated vehicle, which allows collection and delivery of fresh and healthy food to vulnerable people, and in Berlin we have financed a cold storage cell for the local food bank.

 

In order to show our commitment as a firm and to achieve an impact, we have also encouraged our employees to make donations to these organizations.

Protecting our oceans

In addition to our social commitment, we are dedicated to resolving ecological issues and to actively contributing in the fight against climate change. As part of these efforts, we have partnered up with Healthy Seas, a non-profit organization committed to tackling the ‘ghost fishing’ phenomenon, in which abandoned or lost fishing nets are polluting oceans and killing marine life worldwide. Healthy Seas addresses this issue by organizing volunteer dives to recover lost or abandoned fishing nets, but also offers educational programmes to local fishing communities and schools to raise awareness and prevent ocean pollution in the future.

In addition, Healthy Seas is a pioneer for developing circular economy solutions that combine bridges marine protection field work and clean-ups with the fashion industry. Through its innovative vision it has found a way to recycle the recovered fishing nets from the oceans into material that can be repurposed into new products. At DWS, we respect this innovation as Healthy Seas shows us that it is possible to protect our oceans while at the same time create new opportunities and possibilities through recycling waste.