Local business development through
Shell LiveWIRE, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
We invest in community programmes in which our expertise can provide a positive, lasting impact. We focus our social investments on projects linked to road safety, local enterprise development, and securing safe and reliable access to energy for the communities around us. For example, we work hard to reduce road incidents through road safety awareness programmes. Programmes such as Shell LiveWIRE encourage the development of local enterprises by offering business advice to young entrepreneurs. Through our support for the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves – a coalition of public and private organisations including the independent charity Shell Foundation – we help provide access to a cleaner and safer way of cooking to communities in developing countries. Shell is contributing $6 million over three years to the work of the Global Alliance.
We work with communities, local governments, development agencies and non-governmental organisations to create community projects that can thrive beyond our financial support. In many cases, we ask communities to help decide how to invest the funds, and they share the responsibility for developing and putting programmes into practice. At the Salym operation (Shell interest 50%) in Russia, an advisory panel of representatives from local community, government and business decides on the use of funds to improve education, health care and infrastructure in the area. Supplying a local hospital with essential equipment, making schools accessible to handicapped children and building a new nursery school are some examples of projects the panel has decided to develop.
