For many years now, employees at Continental’s plant in Gifhorn have been supporting the city’s charitable institutions with donations and fund-raising campaigns. In 2008, the “Small Kids – Always Well-Fed” relief fund and a child day care center benefited from the support.

Over a six-month period, around 250 employees at the Continental site slimmed down a total of 450 kg to win a donation to the relief fund. Continental donated one euro to charity for every kilo lost. In this way, 450 euros came together.

Internal auctions at the plant brought in about another 1,000 euros, enabling the plant manager and the works council chairman to hand over to representatives of the initiative a donation of 1,500 euros in September 2008.

The goal of the “Small Kids – Always Well-Fed” relief fund is to enable children’s day care centers to provide needy children a warm meal each day at no charge.

In addition, the Gifhorn employees collected 8,500 euros during the pre-Christmas period, half of which was donated to "Pusteblume", a speech therapy kindergarten, and the other half to the local Alzheimer Society.

The kindergarten will use the money to buy an outdoor water adventure center for the children, and the Alzheimer Society will invest in heightening awareness of the disease at schools and in supporting voluntary workers who take care of people with dementia.

One of the institutions supported in 2007 was the Gifhorn home for children, whose “Escalera” project helps boys and girls with problems in reading, writing and arithmetic. Another beneficiary was “Lebenshilfe Gifhorn”. With its residential groups this association enables persons with disabilities to determine for themselves how they want to live. Both institutions received 4,000 euros.