CSR

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Company Name Lion’s Bridge EOOD Contact Person James Blewett-Mundy Position Managing Director Telephone +359 2 953 1545 E-mail james.blewett-mundy@lionsbridge.com Website http://www.lionsbridge.com

CSR PROFILE BOOK
Questionnaire

1. How does the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility correspond with the mission and heritage of your company?
The mission of Lion’s Bridge is to encourage economic development in Bulgaria and the Balkan region. We do this by providing value adding corporate advisory services, helping companies to access investors, strategic partners or finance.

CSR has always been central to the way that we do business at Lion’s Bridge. Our approach to doing business is to be totally professional and honest in our engagement with all of our stakeholders; clients, suppliers, employees and partners. Our clients are a wide range of organizations; governments, international financial institutions, corporate investors and individuals, we apply the same professional and ethical standards across the board.

Lion’s Bridge is a small organization, but despite our limited human and financial resources, we are actively involved in community projects through volunteering and financial support. Our particular areas of interest for community participation are cultural heritage and adult mental health.


CSR CATEGORIES

2. What is your company's CSR involvement with the COMMUNITY?
Lion’s Bridge has directly supported the Bulgarian Cultural Heritage Foundation for the past three years, by providing offices for the Foundation to use, paying the salaries of the Foundation’s employees and through significant voluntary input of time and management advice. We also encourage voluntary activity by our employees in their own areas of interest.

One example of a recent project that showed the benefit of this type of collaboration was the production of a bilingual guide book to Sofia’s cultural heritage. Lion’s Bridge pre-financed the production costs, helped with the preparation of the Bulgarian and particularly the English texts, advised on design, gave contacts for fund raising and helped to organise the distribution of the book. By making the initial investment, Lion’s Bridge helped to turn a concept into reality, showing that it is possible to prepare such materials in a self-sustaining way without any public subsidy.


3. What is your company's CSR involvement with the ENVIRONMENT?
Lion’s Bridge is the publisher of Business magazine. We use significant quantities of paper in the production of some 6,000 copies per month. We are unable to use re-cycled paper for technical reasons, so our aim was to reduce waste after production (minimising unsold copies that are returned to us unread). We have recently completely revised the distribution strategy of the magazine to lead to 0% wastage. This makes sense for us commercially and makes the whole project much more environmentally friendly. A good example of when commercial interests and CSR principles coincide!


4. What is your company's CSR attitude towards your EMPLOYEES?
Lion’s Bridge is a very close knit company. All of our employees are encouraged to participate in the management of the company and to contribute their own ideas for corporate and personal development. We make full disclosure of intended strategic directions and new projects and the financial results of the company are made available to everyone who works at Lion’s Bridge. All employees participate in a profit related bonus scheme.

We value investment in our people, for example, Lion’s Bridge has organised and funded language training and professional development courses, at all levels of the organisation. We review training and professional development issues with each employee on a regular basis, ensuring that everyone helps to define their own personal objectives and development needs.


5. What is your company's CSR involvement with YOUNG PEOPLE and EDUCATION?
Over the past few years, one of our voluntary activities has been involvement with a school in Sofia, offering an opportunity for language students to meet and talk with native English speakers. The original idea was to support the academic curriculum, but in fact these sessions tend to focus on as much on issues of contemporary concern, allowing the students to hear other points of view about Bulgaria or about international issues (e.g. one discussion about 19th century English romantic poetry turned into heated debate about NATO!).

6. What is your company's practice of BUSINESS ETHICS?
Lion’s Bridge has adopted and implemented the BBLF code of business ethics. We demand ethical behaviour within the organisation and we promote the concepts of ethical behaviour to a wider audience through Business magazine.



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