Aflofarm Farmacja Polska has been awarded with a special prize for a socially responsible company issued by "Forbes" monthly. The company's activities in the field of nationwide promotion of healthy lifestyle and local charity activities implemented in the Łódź Province have been recognized and widely appreciated.

In Forbes, we created a chapter composed of all journalists of the Polish edition of the magazine, who perfectly know the essence of Polish business and, above all, have agreed to evaluate companies in terms of their social responsibility. Since measurable, objective criteria cannot be applied to such an assessment, we agreed to take on - nomen omen - the responsibility for making the verdict. Ultimately, the choice fell on Aflofarm, but we appreciated not so much the company's commitment in the local environment as the fact that the Pabianice-based company is strongly and consistently committed to the promotion of healthy lifestyle by fighting smoking, and does it on a nationwide scale without seeking too much publicity – asserts Paweł Zielewski, editor-in-chief at "Forbes" monthly.

Activities from the field of corporate social responsibility have always been an important element of our business and constitute part of the company's strategy. We believe that the big ones should do more, that is why our activities are implemented simultaneously in the national and local fields. We run two foundations: "We love Pabianice", which financially supports local medical facilities, and Aflofarm Foundation, through which we run nationwide educational campaigns. This allows us a possibility of taking a strategic and holistic approach towards corporate social responsibility - asserts Jacek Furman, President of Aflofarm.

Foundations run by Aflofarm have recently allocated over 700,000 PLN to support local medical facilities. 

The "Forbes" award for a socially responsible company serves, above all, as a recognition of one of the most famous social campaigns launched this year, i.e. the large anti-smoking campaign "Do not burn yourself at the start", the goal of which was to convince young people that it is not worth smoking. According to calculations by AGB Nielsen, the campaign's TV spot was seen by over 27 million Poles. The action was also implemented through an educational film directed at young viewers, a website and social media, including Facebook.

Our action made people think and required interaction. 22,000 primary and junior high schools throughout Poland received from us ready educational materials devoted to smoking prevention. We also organized a creative competition to shoot an additional part to the film that promotes the campaign. Everything was done so that young people could actively participate in anti-smoking promotion - asserts Jacek Furman.

Aflofarm employees are also eager to participate in charity activities: they donate blood or go jogging as part of the internal “Biegniemy Po-MOC” campaign and thus collect kilometers covered together. The company then converts them into financial support for employees whose children are struggling with health problems. Since the beginning of the campaign, Aflofarm employees have already run over 2,000 kilometers.

We are the same both inside and outside the company. We want to share our success with our environment and people who need our help. We are glad that our activities are noticed and appreciated - sums up Jacek Furman.

This year Aflofarm became the Strategic Partner of the Responsible Business Forum (FOB) - an association the goal of which is to promote the standards of corporate social responsibility and develop this concept across Poland. Currently, about 50 companies - leaders in the field of corporate social responsibility - belong to the organization that was established in 2000.  

More information:  
Aflofarm Foundation: http://www.aflofarm.com.pl/pl/csr/fundacja/ 
"My kochamy Pabianice" Foundation: http://www.mykochamypabianice.pl/