Alibaba in the Community
Alibaba.com is the flagship business of Alibaba Group, a global e-commerce leader and the largest e-commerce company in China. As a member of the Group, Alibaba.com shares the same community spirit and commitment to developing the e-commerce environment as all the Group companies, including Taobao, Alipay, Alisoft and China Yahoo!.
Supporting SMEs and Creating Business Opportunities Worldwide
Alibaba.com is playing an important role in helping SMEs in China and around the world participate in global trade and become more competitive. We are creating jobs and opportunities for millions of companies by giving them a cost-effective platform to market their products, find quality suppliers and grow their business. In early 2007, we entered into a partnership with two leading banks in China to help Chinese companies with limited assets or credit history secure financing for expanding their business. In 2008, we aided more than 600 SMEs in Zhejiang province to secure an aggregate of more than RMB1 billion worth of loans.
Talent Inbubation
As a pioneer of the industry, we put a lot of resources into teaching people about the power of e-commerce. We established Ali-Institute in 2004 to offer customer training and higher education certification across China. In July 2009, Ali-Institute began to operate under a commercialized model to more effectively incubate talent needed by enterprises seeking to upgrade themselves, create employment opportunities, promote e-commerce knowledge and set a new standard in the e-commerce industry. It provides e-commerce and management training and education services for small businesses and individuals in China through both offline learning centers and an online learning platform.
AliFest - Alibaba Group's Annual China e-Businessmen Summit
Each year, Alibaba Group co-hosts the China
e-Businessmen Summit ("AliFest") in Hangzhou, China in association with the Hangzhou municipal government and the China e-Commerce Association. Tens of thousands of businesspeople attend the event to engage in dialogue and learn from the experiences of other entrepreneurs who use the Internet for business and trade. The event culminates in an award ceremony, in which the "Top 10 e-Businessmen" are recognized for their contributions to e-commerce and the community.
Community Volunteerism and Sichuan Earthquake Relief
Alibaba Group encourages employees in its Group companies to become active in community service programs. The Group regularly facilitates opportunities for its employees to get involved in community activities and philanthropic programs.
After the tragic Sichuan earthquake in May 2008, we reacted immediately by sourcing urgently needed goods that were key to the rescue efforts. Joining hands with China Charity Federation, Alibaba.com launched an online campaign for donations from our employees and members of our websites. In addition, we also formed a relief team made up of our employees and volunteers from outside the company. The team made a number of trips to Sichuan to provide first-hand earthquake relief and delivered a large shipment of stationery supplies donated by our employees which benefited nearly 1,000 local students. As winter approached, the team organized a clothing donation drive for the earthquake victims, sharing the warmth with the less fortunate in Sichuan.
Alibaba.com waived the membership fees for supplier members based in the earthquake areas, in order to help them get back into the business of providing jobs and economic stability to their communities. Re-establishment of the affected regions will undoubtedly take time; and Alibaba.com will continue to contribute to the rebuilding efforts.Environmental Protection
Alibaba.com has been promoting environmental issues from within the organization by running a series of campaigns under the name "Orange Alibaba, Green Earth". The campaigns aim to promote energy and resource conservation by our employees. We also launched a "Tradeshow Alliance Environmental Protection Fund" in October 2007 to promote environmentally friendly and energy-efficient tradeshows. The proceeds were donated to the China Environmental Protection Foundation.