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Social responsibility

The Polsat Foundation

We are deliberately reaching beyond purely commercial operations. Our primary activities under the corporate social responsibility agenda include helping children suffering from various medical conditions and their parents in the Polsat Foundation’s care. We prepared a charity Christmas card and applied a portion of proceeds from its publication to support the Children’s Memorial Health Institute (2009) and the ‘Nobody’s children’ Foundation (2010). We have a tradition, dating back to 2009, of handing over the Christmas gifts budget to beneficiaries of the Polsat Foundation. In 2013, we used those funds for treatment of a 15-year old Karolina of Zagościniec, suffering from an innate immunological deficiency (Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome) and treated at the Immunology Clinic of the Children’s Memorial Health Institute for a cytomegaloviral infection.

As at today, the Foundation reached out to 22,326 little patients and supported financially 1,158 hospitals and health care centres across Poland, refurbishing them or providing modern medical equipment. The total of PLN 194,483,70.44 was spent, with our support, in pursuit of the Foundation’s core objectives.

The most recognisable projects of the Polsat Foundation include the ‘We are for the children’ campaign. Its purpose is to raise funds for treatment and rehabilitation of children in the Polsat Foundation’s care. Telewizja Polsat and Polsat Media have been teaming up for ten years already to organise the ‘Santa Claus Commercials Block’ action, as part of which funds generated from commercials before the main evening news show (‘Wiadomości’) on the Santa Claus day are spent on beneficiaries of the Polsat Foundation.

The Foundation supports its beneficiary base by providing funds for their treatment or rehabilitation. In 2013, the Foundation was for the first time involved in a research project, implemented by the University of Rzeszów and funded by the Polsat Foundation. The project, entitled ‘More reasonable administration of antibiotics by primary care physicians in acute laryngitis and/or tonsillitis suffered by children and youth aged from 2 to 15′ seeks to promote more reasonable use of antibiotics in Poland. The project holds the Minister of Health’s recommendation.

Each Sunday, at 10:30, Polsat News broadcasts ‘Wishing is Having’ programme under the auspices of the Polsat Foundation. The show’s moderator, Monika Zalewska, and her invited guests discuss in each weekly edition a different social issue relating to child treatment and the Polish health care system. Although the ‘Wishing is Having’ project is organised under the auspices of the Polsat Foundation, it will try to also involve other foundations and NGOs. Its overriding objective is to work for the well-being and health of children, raise awareness in this respect, as well as combat malfunctions in the health care system.

Anti-piracy actions

Since 2004, we have collaborated with the SYGNAŁ Association of TV Programming Distributors to combat television piracy and encourage legal use of television signal. Together with the association, we also combat piracy on the Internet. To this end, we pursue the following primary goals: we want to prevent television signal theft, production of counterfeit equipment, obtaining equipment under false pretences, marketing counterfeit cards and set-top boxes, and video material piracy online, and to encourage a change in Poles’ mentality by promoting a clearly disapproving approach to television piracy and online piracy, which should be seen as a legally punishable offence.

The SYGNAŁ Association of TV Programming Distributors contracted from PwC a report entitled ‘Video piracy effects on Poland’s economy – impact assessment’. The work on the document continued from October 2013 to January 2014. The publication’s conclusions show that, year by year, online piracy becomes an ever growing problem for the economy. PwC estimated that every fifth Pole regularly uses websites offering illegal access to video content − this is nearly 30% of all Internet users and as many as 94% of people who browse for online video content.

Internet users spend most of the time watching films from illegal sources (13 hours per month), with sports watching being the least favoured option (3.5 hours per month). Films are replayed from illegal sources 400-500 million times per year, with the figure reaching 650-750 million times for series episodes, and 150-180 million times for sports events.

Solutions proposed by the ‘Video piracy effects on Poland’s economy – impact assessment’ include e.g.:

  • conducting a social awareness raising campaign to bring to limelight dishonesty and harmful effects of piracy;
  • developing recognisable signage to mark legal sources;
  • facilitating access to video content and indicating a single, transparent source of information on legal ways of accessing online video content, including a useful legal site search engine;
  • aligning Polish laws with the digital reality and their consistent enforcement;
  • organising an information campaign on piracy, targeted at entities cooperating with illegal sites, including advertisers, media houses, and financial intermediaries;
  • increasing the volume of video content available from lawful websites.

Article printed from Cyfrowy Polsat: http://www.annualreport2013.cyfrowypolsat.pl

URL to article: http://www.annualreport2013.cyfrowypolsat.pl/stakeholders-and-environment/social-responsibility/

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