On Thursday, March 13, we published our Corporate Social Responsibility report for 2007, along with Ahold’s Annual Report. Most of my colleagues were like: "Now, that is done! Now we can go do other things for at least the next six months." No way! We already started working on the 2008 report in October 2007, as I told you in my last blog. We want to make sure the next report will be a lot duller. What does that mean? It means that we will have more numbers, more explanation and maybe fewer of all those magnificent case studies. That way you get a better overview of what we actually did in the course of the year and what we are doing in terms of integrating CSR into our business.

And it is really tough! Defining all those indicators, getting everybody in the operating companies aligned, and making sure our Board can determine exactly where we need to go with CSR is a never-ending job. We also want to show our goals for the four major CSR themes that we are working on in our strategy, meaning we are deciding what we want to accomplish over the next few years in Healthy Living, Sustainable Trade, Climate Action and Community Engagement.

Last week, we had a board meeting for the Albert Heijn Foundation. Now what is that? The Foundation is funding a variety of projects in Africa in the communities where our suppliers are located. They are related to establishing a better social framework in the work sphere, community efforts aimed at improving quality of life, and work to add small suppliers to our existing export chains.

We discussed proposals for projects in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. In Ghana there was a request for efficient water systems. It’s a real need. Nowadays, in some of the villages where our pineapple growers live young girls (who are usually responsible for getting the family’s water) have to wake up at 1:00 AM to go to a well in some neighboring village, wait forever, get water and carry those 20 liters back home to arrive at 5:00 AM before going off to school again. This must end!

One of the bigger projects will happen in South Africa, where we want to establish instant education containers for remote villages connected to seasonal laborers for one of our grape suppliers. That way we can make sure there are better chances for workers to get an education and have more opportunities in their lives.

These kind of projects are attracting a lot of interest these days in financial circles. In Amsterdam we just had a CSR lunch meeting with a group of banks and investors. They made clear they like our CSR report – but at the same time they want to see more evidence from us of a more quantitative approach to our work.

This is also what the VBDO told us. The VBDO is the Dutch organization for sustainable investments. "Please show how you view the world, take what is relevant for your business and then tell us then what do about it." And that is exactly what we are trying to every day now – envision the world, create inspiring solutions and get going!