World Food Day 2024: Sands Works to Address Food Insecurity in its Global Regions

On October 16, the United Nations will observe World Food Day 2024, established in 1979 to raise global awareness of the prevalence of hunger and the importance of ensuring access to a safe, nutritious diet for all people.

World Food Day provides an urgent reminder of the need for hunger and food access solutions, as the UN estimates nearly 733 million people around the world are facing hunger due to repeated weather shocks, conflicts, economic downturns, inequality and the pandemic. In addition, the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report published this year noted that in 2023, around 2.33 billion people globally faced moderate or severe food insecurity. Within that number, over 864 million people experienced severe food insecurity, which denotes going without food for an entire day or more at times.

Addressing food insecurity is a core priority for Sands and its resorts. All of its regions around the world pursue a number of initiatives to assist food relief organizations, spanning donations, volunteerism and program support.

“As business leaders in our regions, we are committed to playing a meaningful role in addressing hunger relief and helping stem food insecurity,” Ron Reese, senior vice president of global communications and corporate affairs, who spearheads corporate responsibility initiatives, said. “We have several long-term community engagements with leading service organizations to provide meals and food supplies to people in need.”

Donating Surplus Food to Community Partners

One of Sands’ key strategies in helping alleviate hunger is redirecting usable surplus food from its business operations to organizations that provide food to people in need. Sands’ resorts partner with local food relief organizations to safely transport unused food for distribution through their channels.

In Singapore, Marina Bay Sands has partnered with The Food Bank Singapore since 2016 to address hunger among at-risk communities in a variety of engagements, including donating unserved catered food from the Sands Expo & Convention Centre and ongoing Team Member volunteering to sort and inventory food donations at The Food Bank Singapore’s warehouse.

Sands China donates bread and pastries to the Macau ECOnscious Community Fridge project from catering operations and in-house kitchens. Sands’ regions also support the efforts of local food relief partners by holding a number of food drives globally. In 2023, Sands’ resorts donated over 9,000 kilograms of unserved food and 86,900 kilograms in total since 2014.

Building Food Kits to Aid Hunger Relief

From March through June this year, Sands held the annual Sands Cares Global Food Kit Build with events uniting Team Members in the common goal to impact hunger in their communities.

In Macao, Sands China Team Members completed food assembly activations that netted 3,000 food kits for social service organization Caritas Macau. Each kit contained 18 food items with staples such as oil, rice, macaroni, canned goods and biscuits. Sands Cares Ambassadors helped distribute the kits to beneficiaries including elderly and disabled residents, economically disadvantaged families and food bank recipients at Caritas Macau service points in July and August.

In Singapore, more than 330 Marina Bay Sands Team Members, retail tenants and representatives from food beneficiary organizations assembled 5,200 food kits, including staples such as biscuits, milo, rice and canned food. The Food Bank Singapore distributed these supplies to nine organizations including Singapore Red Cross, PERTAPIS and Sunlove, which also participated in the build.

Sands hosted its first corporate food kit build at the company’s new Las Vegas headquarters campus in April. Team Members assembled more than 41,000 shelf-stable meals in partnership with The Pack Shack to benefit local organizations including Three Square Food Bank, Southern Nevada’s largest hunger-relief organization.

The Sands Cares Global Food Kit Build also advanced the company’s 2021-2025 volunteerism ambition, in which Sands aims to contribute 250,000 Team Member volunteer hours to community organizations. As of the end of 2023, Sands Team Members logged 222,823 volunteer hours.

To learn more about Sands’ work to address food insecurity and support disadvantaged populations, read the company’s latest ESG report: https://www.sands.com/resources/reports/.