The first in-person meeting after the pandemic was a really important moment for Ipsen to engage its employees, allowing them to re-connect, communicate, share ideas and find solutions for future projects. The company also wanted to find a way for the teams to give back to the community and produce a positive legacy.
AIM Group, which is collaborating with the company already on several projects helped conceptualise and organise their Re-Connect Meeting in Salerno, Southern Italy, involving employees in an engaging CSR project. To make it a memorable and teambuilding experience, the Community Day was therefore celebrated with a beach clean-up, which allowed the Ipsen teams to give back to the community and pursue a common goal.
“The project, thanks to a creative approach, was able to put in contact different organisations, that until today haven’t collaborated: the Giffoni Film Festival, a famous film festival dedicated to young people which is held annually near Salerno, Legambiente Campania, the local chapter of a national ecologist association and Ipsen, a biopharmaceutical company. First, Ipsen sponsored in 2022 the first edition of the ‘Giffoni Green Festival’ dedicated to sustainability and a company representative intervened as speaker about their diversity and inclusion programs. Then, we designed a simple, engaging and impactful activity in the area, with a beach clean-up of the protected natural oasis and pine forest in Marina di Eboli” explains Alessandro Capasso, Project Manager AIM Group International.
Ipsen involved more than 130 employees who headed to the beach to collect rubbish and plastic debris (small items like bottles and wastepaper as well as big ones like tyres, PCs, TVs) that was hidden in the sand and the trees, 214 kilos of rubbish were collected overall, of which 79kg was plastics, 41Kg end-of-life tyres, 36kg of glass, 28 kg of iron and 11 kg of organic waste.
On the beach, the volunteers and experts in environmental welfare from Legambiente, made a speech about how plastics pollute the beaches and the sea and how it affects on the natural environment and wildlife. Ipsen employees were shocked by the large amount of rubbish they found on the beach in a protected natural oasis. They felt at times that there was simply no end to the amount of rubbish. One employee remarked: “looking at what we collected I think that by paying a bit of attention and changing our habits, we could really do a lot for our planet and our environment”.
“One positive side is that we have done this clean-up with hundreds of people whom we talked with; in addition to making the beach cleaner, from today these people will be more aware and sensitive to the fact that small, but non negligible actions matter” said Michele Buonomo, national delegate, Legambiente.
