Leveraging technology that is core to our tire production, Bridgestone has developed high-quality, highly-functioning seismic isolation bearings. These bearings help prevent buildings from collapsing and sustaining significant damage from earthquakes. This technology has allowed Bridgestone to contribute to greater safety and reliability in people’s everyday lives, as well as greater economic certainty in local communities.

Bridgestone Americas owns and operates a weather center in one of its tire manufacturing facilities in the state of Tennessee, USA. The center includes weather spotter cameras, a local weather scanner, and current weather radar, giving the ability to predict weather patterns. This facility can alert surrounding areas when inclement weather such as typhoons and cyclones is imminent or occurring in the area.

In 1981, Bridgestone was one of the first companies in Indonesia to respond to the government’s request to address the country’s skilled manpower shortage with the creation of the Loka Latihan Keterampilan (LLK) vocational training program operated by the Company at our Bekasi manufacturing facility. Now in its 37th year, Bridgestone Indonesia accepts 48 students every two years for the residential program focusing on mechanical and electrical skills. To date, more than 50 percent of the program’s 754 graduates have chosen to build their careers at the Bridgestone Group.

Bridgestone China, Asia Pacific (CAP)’s Happy Tangram Project in China provides students in rural areas with otherwise unavailable art, music and physical education classes. Also, since 2009, we have donated more than 102,000 books and established 40 libraries through this project.

Bridgestone Thailand’s U-Camp project led by employees at our Nong Khae facility provides leadership development skills to students at 14 area universities.

To increase financial independence for women in Pune, Maharashtra, India, Bridgestone India partnered with the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry Ladies Organization in 2018 to provide training for women to start their own businesses and become nurses or delivery personnel.

In India, many people living in rural areas are deprived of basic educational infrastructure due to economic reasons. Bridgestone provided school facilities and educational materials to children with limited educational opportunities living near the Chakan plant at our affiliate company in India, Bridgestone India Private Limited (BSID). By supporting educational opportunities for children, we help foster educational opportunities that can break the chain of poverty.

In the U.S., the Bridgestone Group is reducing the cycle of poverty by providing work skills that are in high demand. The Group is helping to educate high school students about automotive service careers in partnership with Metro Nashville Public Schools’ Academies of Nashville college and career preparation program at the Maplewood High School Automotive Training Center in Nashville, Tennessee, with a near-replica operating Firestone Complete Auto Care store and training curriculum. Since 2015, 70 students have graduated, 33 of these former students are working for the Bridgestone Group and one has gone on to a management trainee program at Bridgestone. Ten more work in the automotive or transportation industries. In October 2018, a similar classroom and automotive service center was created at the Akron, Ohio, East Community Learning Center, in partnership with Akron Pubic Schools and the United Way of Summit County.

Bridgestone Retail Operations has raised more than JPY 726.0 million/USD 6.6 million^*1 for Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) since 2015 through the Driving Great Futures program. Because research shows that the more children attend the Club, the greater their chances for academic and social success, Bridgestone Retail Operations’ financial grants help Clubs with vehicle maintenance and, in some cases, the purchase of new vans to transport children to and from Clubs. This work was recognized with a Bridgestone Group Award in early 2019.

Established in 2003, Bridgestone Corporate University (BCU) provides education and training opportunities to employees, suppliers, local citizens and other stakeholders. The Center was opened in 2015 to foster specific trainings and education aligned with the Argentinian curricula. Since opening, more than 500 people have graduated from BCU and over 8,000 stakeholders have received training.

Employees from Bridgestone Europe, Russia, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Technical Center in Rome volunteered to educate high school students – the tomorrow’s drivers - on road safety, driving behaviors and tire maintenance, through “CulTire”, an internally development program. 177 students were involved in 2018.

Traineeships for high school science students were held at our Bridgestone EMEA Technical Center in Rome, for an inside look at careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) confirming our commitment to expand education and training opportunities in order to develop job and life skills. In 2018, 124 students participated in this program.

Bridgestone France’s retail and manufacturing locations hosted, trained and mentored more than 50 young adults. Students acquired tire technical skills and became more familiar with the working environment, increasing their employability.

We operate the Builders’ Academy educational training program for unemployed people at a production plant in the city of Béthune located in northern France. Local plant employees become coaches, teaching students manufacturing techniques. Students who complete the program are awarded a certificate from the French government. Through these activities, we engage in the development of human resources with specialized knowledge and skills while securing human resources for the Company. We also partner with government agencies and local NGOs to contribute to lowering unemployment rates, which is becoming a serious social issue.

Volunteering Spanish employees give lectures to mechanic bachelors students. In 2018, 200 students received the lecture.

In Spain, we provide a machine engineering training for young people with intellectual disabilities. The 400-hour program has been designed to correlate with the intellectual level of each participant.

In Japan, the Bridgestone Group employees visit elementary schools and teach children about manufacturing and the Company’s work improving the environment. Through a fun board game, children experience plant management virtually and think about the environment and work.

This project began in 2011, led mainly by the NPO Ochanomizu Academic Association for providing long-term support to children who lost their parents or guardians in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Volunteers, mostly students, regularly meet with children who lost their parents or guardians, spending quality time together and building important relationships in these children’s lives. In addition to financing, Bridgestone offers its recreational facilities as a place for project activities like summer and winter camps.

Each year since 2003, Bridgestone Corporation, along with Bridgestone Cycle and Bridgestone Sports, holds the Bridgestone Children’s Eco-Art Contest. This contest, which began with the desire to preserve our precious natural environment for the children of the future, emphasizes an appreciation for nature as seen through children’s drawings.

Going forward, the Bridgestone Group will continue to support the education of the next generation through these and other activities.

The Bridgestone Group has long believed that a better world can be built through sports.
In 1957, Bridgestone founder, Shojiro Ishibashi, donated 21 swimming pools to schools in Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan. Currently Bridgestone Sports manages 18 swimming schools in Japan. For more than 30 years, with the Bridgestone Group’s ongoing support, two of these schools (in Kurume and Saga) have provided lessons to more than 10,800 people with disabilities who otherwise would not be able to enjoy swimming.

Today, the Bridgestone Group values sports as one important way to promote healthier communities. That is why we are proud to support the Olympic and Paralympic Games, as a worldwide partner of both the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee. Multiple tenets of the Olympic and Paralympic Movements – community service, diversity, environmental stewardship and sustainability – also lie at the heart of Our Way to Serve.

In Japan, the Bridgestone x Olympic x Paralympic a GO GO! is bringing the excitement of the Olympic and Paralympic Movements to communities across the country through a fun event with top-level athletes to help everyone from children to the elderly recognize the fun of playing sports.

Bridgestone CAP promotes the employment of people with disabilities across the region. In Thailand, 10 employees are para-athletes training to compete in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.

Bridgestone is using the Company’s tire technology and innovation to support para-athletes in Japan. Employees created rubber soles for sports prosthesis that make it easier to run on a variety of surfaces and gloves that help wheelchair athletes more efficiently propel the wheels of the chair.

Following are some additional ways the Bridgestone Group promoted healthier communities in 2018.

International Women’s Day is celebrated globally on March 8. In recognition, Bridgestone India organized 11 breast cancer and other health screening events for more than 100 women in rural health centers across Khed taluka, Maharashtra, India. In addition to tests for breast and cervical cancer, blood pressure and diabetes, women received a free supply of protein, iron and calcium supplements for their overall health.

Imagine a caravan of Bridgestone Group vehicles traveling the mountainous, difficult terrain of Argentina to bring much needed supplies to remote, usually indigenous communities. That is exactly what the Bridgestone Solidarity Caravan has been providing since 2010. Employees collect medicine, clothing, school and cleaning supplies, kitchen utensils and furniture and then deliver them during a week-long journey. Along the way, Caravan members help make improvements to schools and communities such as installing solar panels, and pumps for drinking water.

Bridgestone, in partnership with Ochanomizu University (one of two women’s national universities in Japan) has launched the Future Starting Point Project to help cultivate the next generation of female leaders. Women in high school, undergraduate university and graduate school participate in a dialogue about future societal needs with stakeholders from business, education and local government.

Firestone’s Natural Rubber operations in Liberia co-sponsored a team of medical professionals from Children’s Surgeries International to provide more than 100 free surgeries for cleft lips and palates, hernias and a variety of urological conditions at the Firestone Medical Center in Duside. This is the seventh such mission since the collaboration began in 2010.

In collaboration with Professor Kenji Kawashima of the Institute of Biomaterials and Bioengineering at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, the Group launched the development of a walking training device that helps promote health among senior citizens. This rubber artificial muscle, which is attached to the user’s body to assist with walking movement, helps support weight and provide load, applies rubber and reinforced fiber technologies accumulated from long experience developing tires and hoses.

This program aims to recover and recycle used tires, in order to minimize environmental problems, also, the program raises awareness in communities about the prevention of dengue, zika and chikungunya breeding sites. The main strength of the project is that it was established through alliances between private companies, government organizations, non-profit organizations and the community to achieve common objectives. The program promotes an adequate and legal disposition for waste used tires. Since 2017, the program has collected over 229 tons of tires in Mexico and Costa Rica. The tires collected are co processed, used as an alternative fuel in cement kilns or as blocks of tires popularly called "llantiones", implemented in civil engineering works for the control of slopes and soil stabilization.