Community Engagement

SheWorks is a global job shadowing program launched in 2019 to support vulnerable women by learning about Sodexo’s business and job opportunities. We partnered with community organizations around the world to identify women who wanted to learn more about Sodexo’s business, and paired them with a Sodexo employee who served as a host ambassador to be shadowed for a day at a Sodexo site.

In 2019, through 10 partners, the program was deployed in 20 countries and included 295 women who shadowed 238 employees 

SheWorks is about helping women in the communities we serve to discover new possibilities. These may include women who want to enter fields in which women are traditionally under-represented (such as facilities management), refugees or survivors of violence or disabled women.

Women are disproportionately impacted by hunger, and empowering women is the most direct path to the eradication of hunger. Providing women with better education, training, means of production and financial resources increases the possibility of eradicating hunger from the world by 2030! 

To highlight the role of women in addressing hunger and to encourage greater adoption of initiatives that get women permanently out of hunger in the communities most in need, Stop Hunger launched the global “Women Stop Hunger Award” In 2017. Five recipients received travel expenses to attend the dinner, along with a grant of up to 10,000 euros to enhance their Stop Hunger initiatives. The initiative is renewed each year.

To fight against gender-based violence in the Chennai region of India, we work with Project ECO (Enhancing Community Opportunities), an initiative of the YRG Foundation, to address economic stability in families affected by social, economic and other challenges. ECO Kitchen, one of the initiatives of Project ECO, is a program which offers women, who are victims of domestic and other forms of violence, training in food service and hygiene, food carts and a micro-entrepreneurship program which helps women get back on their feet by starting their own food cart businesses. ECO Kitchen has a 30,000-meal production capacity, a scale that lowers costs, in an 18,000 square foot green facility. The kitchen is a naturally lit and ventilated building that uses innovative, eco-conscious technologies, including biomass briquettes, solar geysers, a condensation recovery system, expansive drainage and a wastewater treatment plant which irrigates the garden. A team of 30 Sodexo employees work with ECO Kitchen every day in support of their programs.