Social Involvement

We are very aware of our social responsibilities at Dräger. Our involvement focuses on projects in the areas of education and social issues. With financial support, donations and services, we open up new perspectives for the future of our youth and support society as a whole.

In line with our guiding principle, we aim to make life a little better everyday. Our involvement is always carried out in accordance with our business operations as well as our guiding philosophy "technology for life". Our involvement spans from supporting local schools to equipping hospitals with medical devices.

Examples of our social involvement

“Adopt a School” in South Africa

For several years now, our subsidiary Dräger Medical South Africa (Pty.) has been involved in what are known as “Adopt a School” projects, which entail, for example, reducing levels of illiteracy among children and young people by means of large donations of books. In addition to this, our caring employees are sponsoring a children’s home in Johannesburg and supporting it both financially and by rolling their sleeves up and pitching in to help.

In February 2010, we donated EUR 10,000 and 20 Dräger helmets to the charitable organization @fire - Internationaler Katastrophenschutz Deutschland e.V. The German-based aid organization has 120 members, who are largely firefighters but also include paramedics and forestry workers. They give their time and skills to help in emergencies across the globe, be it fighting forest fires or supporting relief efforts in natural disasters such as the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

The charitable organization Deutsche Cleft Kinderhilfe e.V. from Freiburg, Germany, has the aim of enabling children with congenital cleft lip and palate to have the operation and receive all the necessary treatment. The organization is active in Asia, Africa and South America, funding over 3,500 operations each year and working closely with local aid organizations and surgeons. In April 2011, we supported the organization’s aims with a donation of equipment to Peru.

In May 2011, we made a considerable donation to the “Retten macht Schule” initiative run by the Björn Steiger foundation, enabling around 12,000 school students in the federal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to take life-saving first-aid training. The initiative aims to train all seventh-graders in Germany in CPR in a lesson held in school. The Björn Steiger foundation provides the students and the teachers who conduct the training with specially developed practice dummies and training materials. The foundation has been working to improve emergency first aid in Germany since 1969.

We have provided quick and unbureaucratic help in natural disasters such as the devastating tsunami in south-east Asia in 2004, the severe earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and, most recently, the 2011 marine quake in Japan, where one of our responses was to provide rescuers with emergency ventilation devices and respiratory protection masks. We also helped to ease the suffering caused by the recent severe flooding in Australia and the New Zealand earthquake in 2011 by supplying financial donations.

In September 2008, we equipped a hospital in the Peruvian Andes with medical devices as a donation. This is just one example for our commitment to improving people’s lives across the world. We provide proactive help in the form of donations of equipment in countries marked by poverty and by an insufficient level of medical care for the population.