Projets caritatifs

At ECCO, we believe in the future and in progress, and we regard the challenges lying ahead as an opportunity for positive development. As part of our ECCO Walk for Life programme, we support projects in the following areas:

• Children and education
• Nature and the environment
• Health and an active lifestyle

We focus on charity projects where ECCO’s donations will make a real difference. In order to create more sustainability, we often donate money to specific projects over a number of years.

About SOS Children's Villages Childhood is an important factor to determine a person’s course of life. A safe childhood is the basis for leading a good life as an adult. This is why SOS Children’s Villages works for giving orphaned and vulnerable children a caring family. SOS Children’s Villages has been active in the small African state of Burundi since 1976, but the need for help continues to be great, as Burundi is among the poorest countries in the world. More than one third of Burundi’s children are starving, and many grow up abandoned and alone after the civil war that raged the country.

In one of the areas that was most affected by the consequenes of the war, Cibitoke, SOS Children’s Villages erected a new SOS children’s village which opened in 2010. It now houses 100 children, living in new families with SOS mothers to take care of them. The children attend the village school which will prepare them for life as adults and contribute to the further development of the local community.

The SOS village at Cibitoke consists of 12 family houses, providing a home for children that would otherwise grow up alone and unprotected. One of the newest buildings is the ECCO House which was constructed with the aid of many thousand participants in ECCO Walkathon events across Europe.

In 2011, the SOS children’s village at Cibitoke will accept another 21 orphaned or vulnerable children, making the 12 village homes a safe haven for 120 children altogether. ECCO Walkathon continues to support the SOS children’s village at Cibitoke, covering part of the running costs throughout 2011.

Donation report from 2010

SOS Children’s Village’s project in Cibitoke received a donation totaling 129,500 euros from ECCO Walkathon participants in three countries. The money was mainly used for constructing the ECCO House – one of the family houses in the Cibitoke village – while a smaller portion of the funds were used in a local SOS children's village in Poland.

WWF (international)

About WWF The World Wide Fund for Nature is the world’s largest and most influential NGO working for the conservation of nature and the environment. Running up to 1,200 environmental and nature protection programmes each year, the WWF focuses on creating tangible results across the planet.

While you are reading this, orang-utans and thousands of other animal species are losing their habitats. The reason is that man keeps clearing the planet’s forests at incredible speed: imagine a bulldozer, 100 metres wide, ploughing through the forest at 130 kph around the clock. The resulting deforestation corresponds to the size of 36 soccer fields - per minute! But the world’s forests are home to the largest part of the planet’s plant and animal species. More than half of them originates from our tropical rainforests, among them the orang-utan.

The destruction of rainforests takes its toll: approximately 6,000 orang-utans die each year. If we allow this development to continue, the orang-utan will be extinct in about ten years from now. The WWF works for the survival of the orang-utans and all our forests’ animals by demanding protection of the Earth’s forests which today cover 31 per cent of our planet’s land mass. Before 1950, forests covered twice as much territory.

You can aid the WWF’s efforts for the conservation of the world’s forests by joining the ECCO Walkathon and donating your mileage to the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Donation report from 2010

Last year’s donations to the WWF, amounting to 125,600 euros raised in three countries, were used mainly for the organisation’s Arctic protection programme. The sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing faster and faster, and the WWF's work focused on establishing protected areas for polar bears and other threatened animal species in Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Russia. Man’s presence in the Arctic regions and the industrial extraction of natural resources must be limited drastically, if these species are to survive.

The Danish Heart Foundation's Children's Fund (Denmark)

About the Heart Children’s Fund The Heart Children’s Fund (Børnehjertefonden) is the main instrument in the Danish Heart Foundation’s efforts to help children with heart disease. The fund collects funding for children suffering from congenital heart malformations and their families. It also finances research with the objective of developing new treatment methods, which can save and prolong lives.

Every year in Denmark, approximately 600 children are born with various forms of heart disease. Even though treatment of congenital heart defects has improved drastically over the years, affected children and their families have to deal with fear and an uncertain future, an everyday life often dominated by frequent examinations, hospital stays and continuous medical treatment.

The Heart Children’s Fund works for giving children with heart disease the best possible quality of life. By participating in the ECCO Walkathon 2011 and donating your kilometres to the heart children, you will contribute to giving their families a break from a strenuous everyday life in the form of recreational stays together with other affected families.

Donation report from 2010

In 2010, the Danish Heart Children’s Fund received 81,000 euros raised by ECCO Walkathon participants. ECCO’s donation was used for research in congenital heart disease and for covering a recreational stay for 15 affected children and their families, during which they received professional coaching as well as a longed-for break from an emotionally demanding everyday life.