Toyota Named Corporate Citizen of the Year

WASHINGTON – The Organization for International Investment (OFII) announced Toyota Motor North America as its inaugural Corporate Social Responsibility Award winner.

“When international companies invest and create jobs in the United States, they provide much more than the capital required to establish operations,” said Nancy McLernon, president and CEO of OFII. “Often, they help build stronger communities. Toyota’s partnership with Children’s Hospitals to reduce infection rates within neonatal intensive care units is as innovative as it is important. It also exemplifies the tremendous contributions international companies make to improving the communities in which they sustainably operate.”

In 2014, there was a spike in hospital born central line-associated blood stream infections among infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) across the country, with no apparent reason as to the cause of infections.   Four hospitals among the Children's Hospitals' Solutions for Patient Safety, a network of more than 100 children's hospitals in the United States and Canada, turned to Toyota’s Production System Support Center (TSSC) to help address the increased infection rates. 

By sharing principles of Toyota's Production System, Toyota helped Children's Hospitals develop new standards, decreasing infection rates by approximately 80 percent. Hospital officials plan to share the standards with their entire network, improving the standard of care across the United States.   

“It is truly an honor for us to be the first company to receive this special award,” said Toyota Motor North America CEO Jim Lentz. “This year marks the 25th anniversary that TSSC began sharing its know-how and continuous improvement philosophy with groups involved with disaster recovery, hunger relief and more recently, healthcare organizations. Through TSSC, we hope to continue pursuing our goal to help make a positive impact on our customers, neighbors and our country.”

The CSR Award, which will be presented tonight at OFII’s annual dinner in Washington, showcases the significant contribution that international companies make to local U.S. communities. Many international companies offer their employees the opportunity to volunteer and help direct the company’s corporate social responsibility efforts.  Finalists for this year’s award included several noteworthy initiatives:

• Ahold’s Stop & Shop Supermarket Company built a facility that converts inedible food waste from their stores into clean energy that powers the heating, lighting and air conditioning systems for their adjacent product distribution center. 
• Direct Energy partnered with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals (CMNH) to raise money for a network of 170 children’s hospitals, while also utilizing its expertise to deploy new technology that reduces CMNH’s energy use and costs, so that they can devote more of their resources towards the good they are doing for the community.
• SABIC pioneered a new approach to corporate social responsibility called RAISE, which empowers its employees to drive SABIC’s social responsibility efforts by allowing them to propose community investment programs and volunteering their time to support important causes.
• Building on a tradition of providing college scholarships to the children and grandchildren of American Korean War veterans, Samsung Electronics has launched workforce training programs for returning servicemembers through partnerships with FourBlock and Warriors4Wireless, in addition to partnering with the Fisher House Foundation to provide military families housing close to their loved ones during hospitalization.