Kia Launches $13 Million Global Humanitarian Project

Kia Motors Corporation expanded its corporate social responsibility activities this month by launching its Green Light Project, a global social mobility program that will seek to improve the accessibility of health and education for disadvantaged youth in ailing regions.

The project’s official launch ceremony took place earlier this month at the future site of the Maendeleo Secondary School situated in the Madale area of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (East Africa). Kia Motors Corporation and SBS, a national TV and radio network in South Korea, funded the construction of the school, which will serve as the Green Light Project’s official base camp.

The ceremony drew an attendance of 700 local residents and was attended by Kia Motors Corporation’s Director of Management Strategy, Mr. Gui-Hyun Choi, and Ms. Jin-Ok Yang, the Secretary General of Good Neighbors, an international humanitarian non-government organization in General Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC).

Good Neighbors has been collaborating with Kia Motors to execute its Green Light Project activities such as the secondary school’s construction and deployment of four donated Kia K2700 trucks, which will be retrofitted for use as school and village transportation as well as mobile libraries and health clinics. Kia plans to give USD13 million of funding for the project in the 2012 fiscal year.

The Green Light Project adopts Kia Motors’ corporate social responsibility values of mobility and challenge, which were introduced last year as core principles to develop programs that will help lift social, economic, transport and health restrictions in poverty-stricken areas and give new hope to disadvantaged individuals.

October is the target month for the school’s finished construction along with an adjacent community center named the Green Light Program Center. The school will consist of four classrooms, two laboratories and one library. The community center will serve as multifunctional annex and base camp for the Green Light Project’s social awareness activities, afterschool classes, material storage, and dispatch station for the four Kia K2700 trucks.

All the facilities at the Maendeleo Secondary School will be in full operation starting from next year, and the goal is to have them independently operated by local community participants within the next five years.

“A green light is the universal transit symbol to move forward, and as an automotive company, our Green Light Project will provide mobility to individuals in both a literal and figurative sense. Our Kia K2700 trucks will offer safe transportation to local residents who are isolated from healthcare and education services, and the Maendeleo Secondary School and its neighboring Green Light Program Center will empower individuals to challenge and move past restrictions that are keeping them from living a more fulfilling life,” said Thomas Oh, Executive Vice President and COO of Kia Motors Corporation.

In addition to Kia Motors, Good Neighbors and SBS, the project is also supported by 70 volunteers from Kia’s Happy Move Global Young Volunteers, Korea’s largest private volunteer group, which rallies support for various humanitarian causes. Volunteers will help with an assortment of activities including school construction, bus stop creation, and supporting educational classes at the school.

Kia plans to expand the Green Light Project to other countries and regions through the cooperation of its global network, and its next project will take place in the southeast African nation of Malawi. That program will be a cooperative project with Food for the Hungry International – Korea (KFHI), a global non-profit organization that focuses on poverty needs that relate to food, water resource development, primary healthcare and income enhancement.

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Courtesy of Kia Buzz