All over the Henkel world employees and retirees voluntarily work in social projects. Henkel supports their voluntary work and for this reason founded the MIT initiative (Make an Impact on Tomorrow) more than ten years ago. Each year Henkel promotes hundreds of MIT Children’s Projects all over the world with a total amount of one million euros and a maximum of 10.000 euros per project.
Once a year a Henkel-jury decides on which MIT Children’s Projects will be supported. The applications of employees and retirees are discussed extensively, descriptions of several projects are worked through and at last it is decided on the amount of funding. Now, the MIT board met again in Düsseldorf and discussed hundreds of projects.
To get the year 2010 off to a good start let’s have a look at the exceptional results of all Henkel Smile activities in 2009:
This year more than 280 Henkel employees in Düsseldorf participated in a special charity campaign for deprived children. The so-called “Christmas tree of wishes“ event is part of the MIT-initiative. For this purpose Christmas trees in Düsseldorf were decorated with 287 cards listing children’s biggest wishes for Christmas. Henkel employees had the opportunity to fulfill these wishes, each worth up to 20 Euro. Within only one hour the cards were plucked from the trees. A few days later Henkel employees provided the desired presents, among them dolls, balls, games or scooters and volunteers took the presents to the children.

