Wal-Mart Celebrated Christmas for Children with Physical Difficulties

Dec 24, 2005

(December 24, 2005)—Christmas Day and New Year’s Day are happy festivals. However, children with physical difficulties can not celebrate the festivals like normal children. In order to bring laughter to them, Mart-Mart sponsored Christmas Charity Buffet for children from Shenzhen Social Welfare Center, Shenzhen Baoan District Social Welfare Center and Shenzhen Disease Prevention Center for Children with Special Care Needs in Hilton, Shenzhen. Ms. Lin Chunmei, Vice chairman of Shenzhen Charity Association, and Mr. Hatfield, Senior Vice President of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and President & CEO of Wal-Mart Asia attended this activity. Wal-Mart also donated RMB 20,000 worth of daily necessaries including clothing, infant milk formula, and diaper, etc. to Shenzhen Social Welfare Center. Wal-Mart has sponsored this significant activity for 6 consecutive years.

Mr. Joe Hatfield sent best Christmas and New Year greetings to those children. He said that caring children and helping neighbors were important parts of Wal-Mart community involvements and Wal-Mart will firmly follow its commitments in community and society contributions. Wal-Mart senior executives and associates volunteered to take care of children during the lunch and brought them gifts and wonderful performance. With gratitude, children from social welfare centers also performed in shows such as “Horse Dance” and “Good kids” and presented Joe gifts made by themselves.

Shenzhen Social Welfare Center and Shenzhen Baoan District Welfare Center are both social welfare organizations adopting abandoned babies and orphans. 300 children were adopted by Shenzhen Social Welfare Center, of those about 100 were adopted by Shenzhen citizens. Their foster parents also attended this activity. Most of those children have attended this for several consecutive years. Customer Service and Community Service are Wal-Mart’s good tradition. Mr. Huang guantian, General Secretary of Shenzhen Social Welfare Center and Mr. Taojuan, Director of Shenzhen Baoan District Social Welfare Center expressed great appreciation to Joe Hatfield’s great contribution to Shenzhen Welfare cause.

Wal-Mart achieved global sales of USD 285.2 billion in 2004 and topped the Fortune Global 500 for four consecutive years. Wal-Mart China opened its first Supercenter and SAM’S CLUB in 1996 in Shenzhen. Till now, Wal-Mart has operated 53 outlets in 25 cities through ten-year development, including Wal-Mart Supermarkets, SAM’S CLUBs and Neighborhood Markets. So far, Wal-Mart employs more than 27,000 associates in China with a total investment of RMB1.7 billion. Wal-Mart has also paid taxes of over RMB 1.5 billion. As a responsible corporate citizen, Wal-Mart China actively involves in community services and charity works and has donated RMB 20 million to disaster areas, education cause and various charitable organizations since 1996.