Coca-Cola leverages corporate-community partnerships to support women's progress conference

'Coca-Cola would like to seize this opportunity to translate its CSR commitment to the communities in which we work across the Middle East. Our attendance at the conference reflects our support of women's issues, and to encourage local companies to adopt this theme in their CSR strategies,' said Gurtay Kipcak, Public Affairs and Communications Deputy Director, Coca-Cola. 'We intend to involve ourselves extensively in qualitative CSR projects, and this conference opens new horizons of involvement that we hope to pursue.'

Coca-Cola operates numerous social responsibility campaigns across the Middle East, such as the schools.com project in Jordan, which saw underprivileged schools receive computers to help Jordan develop into a knowledge economy. The company has also constructed children's libraries in hospitals around the Arab world, in Jordan, Palestine and most recently in Bahrain, where a new library was inaugurated in the Salamaniyah Hospital in August, 2007.

Participants at the conference included regional business, government and non-governmental organization (NGO) leaders who have taken a leadership role in creating and promoting cross-sector partnerships to support women's progress in their communities.