Forest of Toyota activities and volunteer support

TMC has been carrying out a wide variety of social contribution activities, spiritually guided by the concepts of "contributing to the company and to the overall good" and "remembering to be grateful at all times", stipulated in the Five Main Principles of Toyoda established in 1935.

In the second half of the 1980s, with the help of a booming economy, society began to demand more social contribution activities from corporations. In December 1989, TMC established the Corporate Citizenship Activity Committee chaired by President Shoichiro Toyoda, to create a structure that actively involved TMC executives in decisions related to corporate citizenship policies. In 1990, when the Federation of Economic Organizations (now the Japan Business Federation, or Keidanren) established the One Percent Club, encouraging member companies to donate one percent of their recurring profit to social contribution activities, TMC became a club member and began promoting a wide variety of contribution programs.

In the area of the global environment, TMC in 1992 created the Forest of Toyota plan and began taking initiatives to help improve the global environment and promote the effective utilization of forest resources. The goal of the Forest of Toyota initiative was to revitalize the suburban forests located inside Foresta Hills, a general recreational facility in Toyota City. In 1997, TMC opened a 15-ha model forest, where it held various events such as the Eco-no-Mori Seminar and the Parent-Child Hands-on Play and Experience Program. Subsequently, a 30-ha validation forest was completed in July 2008.

Furthermore, in response to its employees' heightening awareness about volunteerism, TMC established the Toyota Volunteer Center under the General Administration Division in 1993. The center was also made available to TMC retirees and employee family members, and later expanded the scope of its activities to include cleaning local areas and providing assistance during post-disaster restoration, as well as helping the vision impaired participate in the dancing portion of the Toyota Oiden Matsuri Festival.
Since 2006, employee volunteers have also been participating in tree-planting activities as part of the desertification prevention project started in China by TMC’s Biotechnology & Afforestation Business Division and other organizations in 2001. The Division utilized the know-how it acquired in afforestation in Australia from the late 1990s, and began expansion in China. As of 2010, over 600 Toyota Motor (China) Investment Co. Ltd. (TMCI) and TMC employees have participated in afforestation activities in China. Afforestation Project activities were extended to the Philippines in 2007, and volunteer activities commenced in the country from 2010. In the three years up until 2012, Toyota members and their family, in cooperation with Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP), have planted a total of approximately 3,800 saplings.

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