KB Financial Group is out to help society’s underprivileged with various types of sustainable social contribution activities, the company said on Monday.

The group is seeking to live up to the role it has been given as a company upon which up to 60 percent of the population depends for financial transactions. As a part of such responsibilities, KB Financial said one of its key social sharing activities for this year is to offer better education for elementary and middle school students, saying that a 20 billion won ($18 million) fund, dubbed the “KB Foundation,” has been financing a broad range of scholarship programs.

And this month, the financial group launched an educational board comprised of executives, employees and college students, to provide youth with economic and financial knowledge.

KB has offered this type of social education service to up to 133,000 elementary and junior high school students over the past two years.

In another program started by the group, chairman Lim Young-rok has been visiting elderly citizens living alone to deliver blankets and other goods.

In a similar vein, up to 25,000 KB workers have come together to volunteer up to 250,000 hours at nursing homes and orphanages under another contribution program called “Putting Customers First.”

Helping the elderly in need, helping young people find jobs and planting trees to fight desertification are other projects on the company’s social responsibility agenda.

Meanwhile, the group’s flagship unit KB Kookmin Bank is expanding its corporate social responsibility in overseas markets including Cambodia, where the Korean bank is boosting its presence through Kookmin Bank Cambodia, its wholly owned subsidiary in Phnom Penh.

Programs for Cambodia include treating Cambodian children with heart diseases.

The KB bank unit, in collaboration with the Financial Supervisory Service and the Korean Salvation Army, has helped three children with heart problems receive treatment in Korea. The delegation aims to support about 10 Cambodian children this year.

KB Kookmin has also sent Korean student volunteers to seven other Asian countries to provide Korean language education services and help build education infrastructure.

By Kim Yon-se (kys@heraldcorp.com)