UOB’s formal corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme focuses on three core areas – arts, children and education.
Each year, we support the arts through our flagship programme, the Painting of the Year (POY) Competition, which is the longest running art competition in Singapore.
Since 1982, the UOB POY competition has launched the careers of many professional artists including Singapore Cultural Medallion winners Goh Beng Kwan and the late Chua Ek Kay and Anthony Poon.
UOB has been awarded the Community Chest Special Events Platinum Award and conferred the National Arts Council’s Distinguished Patron of the Arts Award for our support of the arts.
Our CSR programme also features a strong element of our own people volunteering their time to help at local charities. In 2012, UOB employees volunteered more than 1,900 hours of their time to helping various beneficiaries.
In Singapore, we supported programmes that give children with special needs the opportunity to be involved in the arts through beneficiaries such as Very Special Arts and Little Arts Academy.
We also made our presence felt regionally. In Malaysia, we worked with the StART Society’s Art Enrichment Programme to give underprivileged children the opportunity to discover and develop their creative talent. In Thailand, art materials were purchased for financially disadvantaged secondary school students participating in the UOB POY competition.
UOB’s CSR programme goes beyond contributions to the arts. Our involvement in the community also extends to the annual UOB Heartbeat Run/Walk. To date, UOB has raised more than S$3 million for beneficiaries in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.