About Town | Empowering Women to Transform Communities
Launched last April 2017, L’Oréal’s Beauty For a Better Life has since completed one full year of training
for three batches of beneficiaries. Placing
beauty at the heart of re-building identities and lives, and created to ignite
long-term social impact, many of those who benefit from L’Oréal’s Beauty For a Better Life are women in vulnerable social or economic situations.
Since its launch, 62 beneficiaries from the Philippines has been given an opportunity
to go into jobs and even own businesses in the field of hairdressing.
Led by the L’Oréal Foundation, Beauty For a Better Life is deployed in 27 countries globally and is one of the Foundation’s key programs
to empower women in situations of social and economic instability
by training them for careers in the beauty sector. For its first run, L’Oréal Philippines, along with its partner
organization Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), decided to focus
on training women within one barangay to allow for growth within the community
and co-empowerment among themselves.
The program was first brought to Brgy. Sto. Niño in
Marikina as one of the priority areas for unemployment.
"We believe in the power of beauty to change
lives, and Beauty For a Better Life
expands the definition of beauty by using it a way to provide skills and
livelihood opportunities to those most in need. A renewed sense of
self-confidence, diginity and motivation are fundamental changes that we see in
our graduates and it is our hope and vision that Beauty For a Better Life empowers these women to gain a better quality of life
through increased access to livelihood opportunities, and thereby becoming socially
and economically empowered to also serve as beacons of hope for their own
families and communities”, shares
Carmel Valencia, L’Oréal Philippines Corporate Communication Manager.
To date, 62 individuals have completed the program, 22 of which come
from the third batch graduating this April 2018. Each batch of beneficiaries underwent daily
classroom sessions in the Barangay Hall for three months wherein they were
taught different hairdressing skills such as blowdrying, hair coloring, hair
cutting, and application of hair treatments – under the tutelage of L’Oréal
Philippines trainers. They were also exposed to a one-week internship in
L’Oréal’s partner salons across Metro Manila to expose them to actual
hairdressing jobs and potentially further their career options.
"We believe in the power of beauty to change
lives, and Beauty For a Better Life
expands the definition of beauty by using it a way to provide skills and
livelihood opportunities to those most in need. A renewed sense of
self-confidence, diginity and motivation are fundamental changes that we see in
our graduates and it is our hope and vision that Beauty For a Better Life empowers these women to gain a better quality of life
through increased access to livelihood opportunities, and thereby becoming socially
and economically empowered to also serve as beacons of hope for their own
families and communities”, shares
Carmel Valencia, L’Oréal Philippines Corporate Communication Manager.
To date, 62 individuals have completed the program, 22 of which come
from the third batch graduating this April 2018. Each batch of beneficiaries underwent daily
classroom sessions in the Barangay Hall for three months wherein they were
taught different hairdressing skills such as blowdrying, hair coloring, hair
cutting, and application of hair treatments – under the tutelage of L’Oréal
Philippines trainers. They were also exposed to a one-week internship in
L’Oréal’s partner salons across Metro Manila to expose them to actual
hairdressing jobs and potentially further their career options.
From 2009 to 2012, L’Oréal Philippines mounted the
annual ‘Bigay Daan’ program which taught hairdressing and makeup skills to over
300 unemployed women in Pasig over four years.
In
2017, L’Oréal Philippines relaunched the program under a new name, ‘Beauty For
a Better Life’. Led by the L’Oréal
Foundation and implemented in different countries across the globe, ‘Beauty For
a Better Life’ continues to empower and change the lives of women through
developing their self-confidence and providing them with an opportunity for a
better life. Acknowledging that having a ‘better life’ may mean different
things to different people in different cultures, the Foundation gives its
counterparts in different countries the liberty to design the program to be
more appropriate and relevant to the local context.
About L’Oréal Philippines
L’Oréal has devoted itself to beauty for over 100
years. With its unique international portfolio of 34 diverse and complementary
brands, the Group generated sales amounting to 25.8 billion euros in 2016 and
employs 89,300 people worldwide. As the world’s leading beauty company, L’Oréal
is present across all distribution networks: mass market, department stores,
pharmacies and drugstores, hair salons, travel retail, branded retail and
e-commerce. Research and innovation are at the core of L’Oréal’s strategy,
working to meet beauty aspirations all over the world. L’Oréal’s sustainability
commitment for 2020 “Sharing Beauty With All” sets out ambitious sustainable
development objectives across the Group’s value chain.
L’Oréal Philippines has been present in the country as
a wholly owned subsidiary of L’Oréal since 1994. Based on the unique and
diverse beauty needs of every Filipino, L’Oreal Philippines manages a portfolio
of the most technologically advanced brands across several beauty categories
and present across all beauty channels, including L’Oréal Paris, Maybelline New
York, Garnier, Nyx Professional Make Up, Kiehl’s, Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani,
Guy Laroche, L’Oréal Professionnel, Kérastase, and Matrix.
As one of the big beauty players in the country,
L’Oréal Philippines has also made its contributions as a good corporate citizen
to the country over its 25 years of presence. It is our priority and commitment
to reduce the impact of our activity on the planet and bolster positive
socio-economic impact on the lives of people and communities in the
Philippines. This has been done through our various philanthropic activities
such as “Beauty For a Better Life,” and “Citizen Day.”
About L'Oréal
L’Oréal
has devoted itself to beauty for over 100 years. With its unique international
portfolio of 34 diverse and complementary brands, the Group generated sales
amounting to 26.02 billion euros in 2017 and employs 82 600 people
worldwide. As the world’s leading beauty company, L’Oréal is present across all
distribution networks: mass market, department stores, pharmacies and
drugstores, hair salons, travel retail, branded retail and e-commerce. Research
and innovation, and a dedicated research team of 3 885 people, are at the
core of L’Oréal’s strategy, working to meet beauty aspirations all over the
world. L’Oréal’s sustainability commitment for 2020 “Sharing Beauty With All”
sets out ambitious sustainable development objectives
across the Group’s value chain.