On the day on which volunteering and volunteers are celebrated (December 5), EDP wants to honor those who dedicate part of their time to others and will launch several initiatives: from today until Three Kings' Day (January 6), the company invites all Portuguese people to thank the volunteers they know for their work throughout the year.

Via an internet platform, and under the motto "I dare to change the world!", it is possible to share stories and send messages through social media to the volunteers that one wishes to pay homage to. It is a way of celebrating this date, valuing volunteers' work and their role in communities throughout the year.

At the same time, the company will also start the eighth edition of its Christmas volunteer campaign. EDP volunteers, who include employees, family and friends, are challenged to leave the office and contribute to common and local causes. The goal is to humanize Christmas for those who need it most, especially institutionalized people and those at risk of social exclusion or who are vulnerable.

As in other years, most volunteer initiatives are proposed locally by employees, who count on the support of the company to carry them out. The campaign started in Coimbra with volunteers who took two organizations to one of EDP's Christmas parties, and in Porto with their support and presence at a community dinner organized by Serve The City, an organization that brings to the table volunteers and people in need and with low incomes. These dinners will continue to be supported by EDP during the month of December.

Throughout the month there will be more than 70 initiatives scattered throughout the country and in more than 8 countries where the group has a presence (with activities also in Spain, France, Poland, the United Kingdom, Romania, Brazil, Italy and the United States).

In Portugal, EDP seeks to promote the coming together and humanization of people from various generations and to strengthen the activity of institutions through the rehabilitation of spaces or other donations. The volunteers will rehabilitate the pediatric intensive care area of the Hospital de Santa Marta in Lisbon as well as other organizations. They will deliver hundreds of food baskets and toys and will promote Christmas lunches with social solidarity institution users.

The volunteers will also help to reforest the regions affected by fires (Monchique, Santa Comba Dão and Oliveira do Hospital), an initiative that has already been undertaken at other times of the year in various parts of the country. EDP also invited to these activities the participants of NOS Alive who signed up during the festival to plant trees with EDP in these regions.

In this campaign, EDP hopes to mobilize more than 1,000 volunteers, as is usually the case, and benefit more than 5,000 people.

The EDP Volunteer Program is one of the pillars of EDP's social investment strategy and has just been awarded the Join4Change Seal of Excellence in Volunteerism by the Portuguese Volunteerism Confederation (CPV) in partnership with the Instituto de Solidariedade e Cooperação Universitária (ISU) and with the support of the Portuguese Association for Quality (APQ). This distinction, which is the highest classification level, recognizes quality in the management of the volunteer programs and is an incentive for EDP to continue to work with its eyes fixed on the challenges facing its communities, which is in alignment with the group's social investment and people management strategy.

EDP Volunteering Program

Since its inception in 2011, the EDP Volunteer Program has had more than 30,000 participants for a total of over 225.000 hours of volunteering and has established partnerships with over 1,800 organizations, impacting the lives of more than 1 million people.

In 2017, there were 2,918 volunteers, of which 2,294 were employees and 624 friends of EDP, who shared their energy with the communities where the company has a presence through more than 40,000 hours of volunteering, 18,028 of which were dedicated to sharing skills with schools, IPSS and communities.

Find out more about EDP Volunteering Program.