Standard Chartered helps building six wells in Vinh Phuc province

This is the first amongst six wells the bank will dedicate to the province. By jointly raising funds to construct wells, the bank aims to help local residents to gain access to clean water source, which is essential to their health and lives.

This event also marks the first cross-border initiative between Standard Chartered Bank (Vietnam) and Standard Chartered Bank (Korea) in ongoing efforts to tackle avoidable blindness through the Bank’s Seeing is Believing (SiB) global initiative.

Louis Taylor, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank (Vietnam) said: “I am honoured to be here today to dedicate this well to Hop Ly’s residents. We understand the difficulty of obtaining clean water in rural areas and we want to make a significant difference to local residents by ensuring that they can have clean water.

“20 per cent of visual disabilities in children are caused by contaminated water. Therefore, we are donating wells not only to provide clean water but also to prevent blindness and other diseases. Standard Chartered has been operating for over 150 years in over 70 countries and as part of our brand promise “Here for good”, we will make continuous efforts to deliver a positive impact on the communities in which we live and work.”

In Vietnam, the bank has been actively working with partners to promote and support the local sight-restoration and eye-care programmes. Since 2004, SiB initiative has resulted in restoring the eyesight of and preventing blindness for 7,162 people, providing eye care services to 481,625 people, providing 8,248 glasses for short-sighted persons and training for over 802,000 people about primary eye care.

In 2013, Standard Chartered Bank (Vietnam) and Standard Chartered Bank (Korea) pledged to raise $1 million for its phase five of the joint SiB programme in Vietnam. All funds collected in both countries will be channelled to activities of SiB in Vietnam.  

At global level, Standard Chartered commits to raise $100 million and aims to help 50 million people by 2020 for its sustainable eye-care programmes. This pledge fully supports the global initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindness: ‘VISION 2020: The right to sight’.