Foreword

Chairman of the Achmea Foundation Board

Annual Report 2020

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of the year 2020 has affected the many initiatives that Achmea Foundation supports. In Africa, a lockdown has been imposed in many countries, causing projects to be delayed. Sadly, we had to bid farewell to Samuel Waterberg, who died as a result of a COVID-19 infection. Samuel founded the People’s Pensions Trust in Ghana. This fund makes it possible for people working in the informal sector to save for a pension. The Achmea Foundation supports this initiative.

The Achmea Foundation has had to adjust its activities due to the pandemic. This gave us the opportunity to support an innovative COVID-19 intervention by PharmAccess. PharmAccess has helped healthcare providers in Africa to build and improve their testing capacity. The data obtained also help to prioritise target groups and geographical areas for vaccinations. The use of expertise from Achmea for the benefit of organisations abroad (Expert Volunteer Assignments) took place online. The same applies to the ImpactPlus programme for the professionalisation of social entrepreneurs in care and welfare. Many Achmea employees wanted to help people who were hit hard by the pandemic. Our foundation was able to facilitate this through the Voor Elkaar platform. For example, they could sign up with the Red Cross as volunteers. In addition, the Achmea Foundation doubled the amount donated by employees for a play set and colouring pack for school children in Amsterdam Noord.

But even more has happened. Once again, promising initiatives have qualified for an investment from our foundation. In Africa, these include the implementation of an app that supports farmers in Kenya with their work (by Apollo), the provision of detailed weather forecasts to farmers in Mali by Ignitia and the digitisation of group loans, mainly for microcredit providers, by Sevi. In this annual report, you can read about all the wonderful initiatives we support in Africa. In addition, eight social entrepreneurs in the Netherlands participated in the ImpactPlus programme this year, which helps them professionalise their work.

The Achmea Foundation Strategy 2021-2025 has been adopted and shows the ambitions for the next five years. In the spring of 2020, we evaluated our 2016-2020 strategy plan and subsequently adopted a new strategy and work plan for the next five years. We have chosen to continue the course on which we have embarked. We continue to ensure a sustainable impact on the socio-economic situation of the most vulnerable people in the Netherlands and in developing countries. However, additional accents regarding sustainability and technology have been added to the strategy. The Achmea Foundation’s commitment to Achmea’s employees remains important.

You can read it all – and we hope you will enjoy reading it – in this annual report, which, like last year, takes the form of a digital magazine.