Heart-warming stories about Prudential Life Insurance Co.’s community service tradition trace back to 19th century America.

Prudential’s history began with John Fairfield Dryden who created “The Prudential Friendly Society” in 1875 in order to help poorer people. The first U.S. company to make life insurance affordable to the working class, Prudential has supported people shunned by the old social security system ever since.

For more active and systematic CSR activities, Prudential Life Insurance Co. of Korea established a separate foundation called “Prudential Foundation” in 2007. 

In addition to numerous student volunteer community service programs, Prudential has hosted Korea’s largest community service competition for middle school and high school students every year since 1999. More than 113,000 students participated in the competition since its inception.

The winner of the national competition is also sent to the global competition, competing with the winners of the same volunteer competition held in the Prudential offices in other countries.

Prudential Life Insurance has also supported bone marrow donations since 2007 with the Korean Red Cross. About 1,140 employees of the company signed up for donation agreements, 11 of which have actually donated.

Since 2002, the company has supported the foundation and activities of the Korean branch of “Make-A-Wish,” the world’s largest organization that realizes children’s wishes, to deliver love and hope to children who suffer from incurable diseases.

Each of Prudential’s employees is free to donate less than up to 10,000 won ($9) to the foundation from their monthly salary, and the company matches the employee’s monthly donation.

Also, since 2007, the company has run an extracurricular program called “Children’s Economy Class” that is designed to help develop a healthy sense of economy.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)