Sindelfingen food bank and discounts for families with children

The past year, 2022, was very challenging in many respects, including for Merus. Coronavirus, the war in Ukraine and strained supply chains all taught us, as a society and as a company, that things once taken for granted are by no means as secure as we believed. Fortunately, Merus weathered most of these new challenges quite well, particularly because we have so many long-term partnerships. This allowed us to fulfill our social responsibility as a company in 2022 as well. Here are 2 examples:

Also known as the “Martinslädle”, it is within walking distance of our office. The Sindelfingen food bank is run by the ecumenical Sozialstation Sindelfingen and, like most food banks in Germany, relies on volunteers. A few years ago, “when the world still felt as if it was in order”, the food bank, the Martinslädle, was still located on Ziegelstraße (near the Martinskirche, hence the name), and a long queue would form well before opening time. The Martinslädle is now in the Obere Vorstadt, and we still drop by now and then. Last year, however, we noticed that demand had risen enormously. So we decided that, if we could not support the food bank with volunteer work, we would at least support it financially on a regular basis.

We have been offering a discount for families with school-age children for many years. We started this discount project in 2008. Since then, the number of families receiving it has grown steadily. Over 14 years, almost 200 families with more than 400 children have benefited from this offer. We are pleased that, despite all the difficulties, 34 families received a discount of EUR 25 for each of their 82 children in the past year, 2022.