Social involvement

As a family company we are concious of our social responsibilities and regularly help people who are in particularly bad situations with contributions, support for the next generation of woodworkers as well as support worldwide relief organisations.

At the beginning of this year, Jörg Schmidt, head of the SOS Children's Village in Imst, was pleased to receive a donation check from the Felder Group.

In the first of more than 200 Children's Villages, over 700 children have found a loving home since 1949. Currently, 32 children live in the nine SOS Children's Villages families in Imst and grow up in a family-friendly environment. So far, a place to have a jolly good romp and where to enjoy nature together was missing. Thanks to our donation, the new forest playground with monkey bars was opened and stormed by the children.

"There is nothing better than to help a child," Hermann Gmeiner once answered the question of his motives for founding the SOS Children's Villages. The pictures that reached us from the opening in Imst are the best proof of that. We would like to share with our employees and partners around the world these impressions and the gratitude of the numerous children.

We are very proud as the Felder Team to be able to make a small contribution to help disadvantaged children to have a stable and, above all, happy future.

The construction of a follow-up centre for the families of children suffering from cancer was very important to us this year. The proud sum of 4,820 Euros was collected by the workforce as part of the pre-Christmas fundraiser. The amount achieved was again doubled and rounded up by management this year.

On behalf of the Children's Cancer Aid, Veronika Posch was thus able to receive a check for 10,000 Euros.

The after-care center "Sonneninsel" of the Children's Cancer Aid is currently under construction in Salzburg and will accommodate up to 50 people.

"Today is Christmas. Simply choose and order what you need for woodworking at the training workshop in Campo Grande ", said Hansjörg Felder at the contract signing with Girassolidário. That was in the summer of 2007. Then a true odyssey started.

The aid agency Girassolidário is an independent, non-profit organisation based in Dietikon, Switzerland, which, together with its parent organization in Brazil, actively promotes a decent future for socially disadvantaged children and adolescents in Brazil. Since 2002, integral programs and projects have been realized which, as a verifiable result, achieve the sustainable improvement of the living conditions of children, adolescents and their families.

Girassolidário started on the 3rd of September, 2007 with the project "My future – carpenters with brains", which offers young people from the poorest classes of Campo Grande the chance of a sound vocational training and a life in personal responsibility.

When Hansjörg Felder, Managing Director of Felder KG in Hall in Tyrol, welcomed the two representatives, Fredi Lei and Stephan Hofmann, of the relief agency Girassolidário Switzerland and Brazil, he spontaneously decided on a very generous donation to the Escola Pau-Brasil. At that time no one could guess which bureaucratic marathon this solidarity act, to create a complete carpentry machinery park, would trigger.

The biggest hurdle in the nearly two-year import process, which ultimately went through four state agencies in Brazil and whose forms are packed in three file folders, was the tax exemption for donations to non-profit organisations which is anchored in Brazilian law.

After the packaged machines had spent almost two years in the warehouse and after a seemingly endless bureaucracy odyssey, Girassolidário finally received the long-awaited machine donation from Felder KG from Tyrol on September 14, 2009.

In the meantime, the machines have been assembled in the training workshop and will play a key role in enabling Escola Pau-Brasil to work towards its goal of differentiating itself with products of high quality on the market and thus achieving self-financing. Thanks to the large machines, carpentry training can now be continued at the top level. Soon it will be possible to accept larger orders!