Created in 2019, the Thales Solidarity fund took over from the Thales Foundation, whose mandate ended after five years of significant achievements.
The fund's Board of Directors, chaired by Patrice Caine, approves its strategy and has an internal Strategic Committee responsible for proposing focus areas and reviewing applications and selecting projects to fund.
This charitable fund is one pillar of the Group's corporate citizenship programme and its mechanism for funding and supporting community engagement projects and initiatives. It also ensures sound project management and the efficient use of funds.
Its mission is to work with those who are preparing for the critical societal transformations of the future to help develop innovations that are responsible, accessible and useful to everyone. To do so, the fund aims to open and share the Group's capacity to innovate and its expertise and talent in order to make an impact in its umbrella programme's three focus areas: education and professional integration, digital citizenship and environmental protection.
Projects supported by the fund must meet the Thales Solidarity programme's selection criteria and place special emphasis on sharing Thales employees' skills and expertise. Projects fall under one of the following categories:
- Pilot projects are ambitious, innovative projects with a significant societal impact. Co-developed with experienced partners in each focus area, these one- to three-year projects aim to prototype or scale up an initiative, offer innovative solutions to critical challenges and have a potential for international development.
- Employee projects are selected via an annual call for projects to employees involved in community engagement projects in one of the programme's three focus areas. The primary aim of employee projects is to heighten the societal impact in the aeas where Thales does business.
As part of the call for projects launched in early 2020, 11 projects submitted by Thales employees were selected. The projects are sponsored by employees based in France, Italy, Spain and the United States, and provide support for more than 2,600 children and adults in Asia (Cambodia), Africa (Benin and Senegal), Latin America and the Caribbean (Ecuador and Haiti) and Europe (France, Italy, Spain).
Find all of the projects supported by the fund on our engagement platform.