Kia Canada has begun a program to financially assist local charities and non-profits across Canada building inclusive communities through “innovative programming encouraging movement.”
Kia Communities in Motion, which was announced last December, is a four-year, $1.4 million grassroots endeavour done in conjunction with Community Foundations Canada.
Michael Kopke, Kia Canada’s Marketing Director, told Canadian auto dealer that the company began looking at its corporate social responsibility opportunity a year ago in terms of how it can give back as a relatively new brand in Canada.
“Canada, quite frankly, has been very good to Kia, especially of late, and at the same time we relaunched our brand with the slogan Movement That Inspires,” said Kopke. “So how do we embrace who we are as a company around mobility and bringing mobility to people quite literally in the case of cars? We really wanted to be locally based because that’s where our dealers are. How do we bring the idea of bringing mobility to people in a way that is recognizing the needs of Canadians across the country from a human point of view, from an environmental point of view, from a demographic point of view?”
Kopke said Kia Canada was able to bring to life its vision of mobility through Community Foundations Canada’s infrastructure and setup because it is already supporting local charities.
“So bringing $1.4 million over four years to Canadians across the country through locally-based people in need is what the genesis of the program is,” he said.
He said one of the challenges was to find a way to engage its expansive network of 197 dealers. He said Community Foundations Canada meshed what Kia Canada wanted to do because it is a national organization and provided a mechanism to get the message across Canada.
“The great thing about CFC is they firmly believe the local communities know the real challenges of those communities and the best way to address those challenges,” he said. “From our point of view we want to bring our corporate mission to life. From a criteria point of view, we’re trying to align those charities that are literally and figuratively helping people move through life.”
Nine charities or non-profits have been selected in the first year of the program, including Saskatchewan’s Bridging Service Collaborative—a program that will assist those in crisis situations through supports such as overnight accommodation, access to emergency food or emergency transportation—to Windsor’s Young Women in Motion program by Women’s Enterprise Skills Training of Windsor, which aims to break barriers with biking by increasing the mobility, physical and social well-being of young BIPOC women.
