Helping people to help themselves - for a better life in CEE
We foster and support socially disadvantaged children, young people and women in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
Our focus is on education as the most sustainable investment in the future.
About the CEE Charity
We are a Corporate Volunteering Initiative of Raiffeisen Bank International AG (RBI)
Tax-deductible donation
As an association that supports charitable projects in Central and Eastern Europe, donations to us are tax-deductible in Austria.
Our successes so far
over 160 projects
12 countries
over 10 million Euro for projects
for 19 years
Our Footprint
As CEE Charity, we are active in the same region as Raiffeisen Bank International. In other words, in the 11 markets in CEE where there are RBI network banks. Russia and Belarus have therefore been among the countries in which we have been able to support orphanages, schools, kindergartens and many children and their mothers since the beginning of our involvement. Since February 2022, however, we have not accepted any new projects and have let the existing ones expire on the agreed dates.
Our Team
Our team of dedicated RBI Group employees in Vienna and at many Central and Eastern European locations manages all projects on a voluntary basis.
Letter from the founder
My sixtieth birthday in 2006 was both an occasion and a motivation for me to launch a sustainable initiative with the goal of supporting people in need in Central and Eastern Europe.
Letter of the Founder
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
dear friends and supporters,
My sixtieth birthday in 2006 was both an occasion and a motivation for me to launch a sustainable initiative with the goal of supporting people in need in Central and Eastern Europe. Over more than four decades of my professional life - especially during the expansion of Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) - I not only witnessed the rapid economic upswing and the rise in prosperity in the region, but also its darker sides: poverty, lack of access to education and medical care, children without prospects, and families pushed to the margins by social circumstances.
To give people in difficult situations future prospects and to provide help for self-help, we therefore founded the CEE Charity, because we are convinced that economic success also brings responsibility. In recent decades, Austria and in particular RBI have benefited greatly from the economic growth in Central and Eastern Europe. Our banking group not only accompanied this development but played a key role in shaping it - and took advantage of many opportunities. That is why - guided by the cooperative principles of Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, who regarded help for self-help as “sustainable support” - it is important to give opportunities back.
Our charity focuses on what is most urgently needed. We concentrate on education, medical care, and social integration, especially for women and children. We enable children to attend school, finance therapeutic care, support women and mothers in need, provide for street children, and help with basic supplies in orphanages. Our support is always project-based, transparent, and directed to where help is most urgently needed - often in areas where large aid organizations do not provide assistance. What matters to us is that our help has a sustainable effect and improves concrete life paths.
What makes this charity special is the way it is organized. It is a social project that grew under the umbrella of a successful business project. RBI and its network banks in the region provide not only their infrastructure but, within the framework of corporate volunteering, above all the time, expertise, and personal initiative of their employees. That is why we can proudly say: only around 3% of donations go to administration. The remaining 97% reach those in need directly.
I firmly believe that together we can achieve more. That each and every one of us has the power to make a difference. And that each and every one of us has a responsibility to help and to make the world a bit better and fairer.
Become part of this movement. Your help counts - today more than ever.
Sincerely,
your Herbert Stepic