Our commitment to local communities…
Key Points
- Community Commitment: Berge Bulk emphasises giving time, skills, and support beyond financial contributions.
- Live Well + Give Well Initiative: Collaborates with the Marshall Foundation to boost crew wellness, donating to charities based on wellness challenges completed.
- Charitable Engagement: Raising over US$80,000 a year, supporting nine charities focused on health, environment, and welfare.
- Employee Family Volunteering: Initiatives like Families Ashore allow employee families to engage in community service, fostering connections and environmental stewardship.
- Impact Projects: Examples include assembling solar lamps for children in energy poverty and beach clean-ups to address plastic waste.
Everyone makes a difference by volunteering
At Berge Bulk, we have always had a strong commitment to help and serve the local community. Our aim is not only to give financially — we also believe in the power of giving our time and our skills to support meaningful causes.
All of our employees, and their families, have the opportunity to participate in our impact projects — a rewarding and mutually beneficial relationship.
Crew Volunteering
Live Well + Give Well
Live Well + Give Well is Berge Bulk’s annual community impact campaign, run in partnership with Well@Sea and the Marshall Foundation — our philanthropic sister organisation. This initiative aims to boost the health and wellbeing of our ship’s crew whilst giving back to the community. For three months each year, every time our crew members complete a wellness challenge on board, Berge Bulk makes a $5 donation to charity through The Marshall Foundation.
Charitable Donations
This campaign supports nine charities, addressing a range of impact areas, including men’s health, waste reduction, marine biodiversity, child protection, tree planting, and seafarer welfare. We prioritise charities based in the home countries of our seafarers.
In 2023, over the three-month campaign, 1,563 crew members on board and 997 families on shore participated and raising a total of USD $85,970 for the nine selected charitable organisations.
Stairway Foundation
Every year, a group of our seafarers visit the Stairway Foundation in Puerto Galera, Philippines. Berge Bulk employees volunteer at the Foundation, immersing themselves in the Sea Adventure School, learning about marine ecosystems, engaging in a shoreline clean-up of local mangrove forests, as well as planting new trees. The Sea Adventure School initiative, which has involved over 9,000 participants to date, is an official part of the science curriculum for high school students.
OSCAR Foundation
The Organisation for Social Change Awareness and Responsibility (OSCAR) Foundation empowers underprivileged children and youth in India by using football as a platform for education and life skills. Since 2010, more than 14,000 individuals from low-income communities have benefited from its programmes.
Berge Bulk colleagues, including senior officers, junior officers, corporate colleagues, and family members, are able to visit the OSCAR Foundation in Mumbai, India. They spend a day with the charity’s beneficiaries, gain deeper insights into OSCAR’s remarkable work, and join in friendly football matches.
Shore Team Volunteering
As well as our seafarers, we encourage and facilitate members of our shore team to volunteer. They play a crucial role in addressing local social issues and participation encourages civic engagement.
In addition to the obvious benefits and impact on the local communities where we focus our efforts, volunteering enhances mental wellbeing, builds relationships, fosters cultural awareness and is generally a very rewarding experience.
The two examples below, are projects in which the Berge Bulk shore team recently volunteered:
Solar Buddy Lamp Building
Solar Buddy is an impact organisation with a mission to unite a global community which ‘illuminates the futures’ of all children. A team from Berge Bulk’s Singapore headquarters recently volunteered to assemble Solar Buddy lamps for children living in energy poverty. These solar lamps help to reduce carbon emissions, improve indoor air quality, aid studying at home, and help families save money on kerosene and firewood.
The lamps take less than an hour to assemble, and our employees worked together to build 50. They also wrote letters to the recipients which they packed with the lamps in a large plastic container. This container goes on to serve as a water purification unit — providing clean drinking water for communities in Southeast Asia facing energy poverty.
Batam Beach Clean-Up
Berge Bulk has strong connections with Seven Clean Seas — an ocean impact organisation on a mission to remove 10,000,000kg of plastic from our oceans by 2025. We sponsor a Seven Clean Seas project in Batam, and we sent volunteer teams from our Singapore office to collaborate with them.
Our volunteers collected over 700kg of plastic waste from rivers, beaches, and coastal communities near the Sunghei Bengkong river. Once collected, they then sorted and segregated the waste at the Seven Clean Seas Material Recovery Facility, where they were able to discover the many innovative methods for repurposing it.
Family Volunteering
Through our Families Ashore programme, it’s not only our shore team and seafarers who can volunteer — their families are able to participate too.
This joint effort helps to foster connections between Berge Bulk employees’ families, whilst promoting environmental stewardship in the communities that we serve.
The video below shows a Families Ashore beach clean-up event at Navotas Rizal, Philippines. Over 200 participants, including Berge Bulk seafarers and their families, worked together to clean up the beach and plant 200 mangrove trees:
The Marshall Foundation
Established as a sister organisation to Berge Bulk, The Marshall Foundation aims to support innovative organisations that tackle social and environmental problems in parts of the world that are important to Berge Bulk’s work and success.
These organisations, often led by social entrepreneurs, are selected because they address global concerns that matter to us. The Foundation has provided more than US$11,500,000 to 58 organisations in 28 countries since it was founded.