OUR RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS THE SOCIETY

One of the important elements contributing to Agora's development are social activities. Agora Group companies, brands and media have for many years been implementing a number of social, cultural and educational activities, initiatives and actions, also engaging in charity activities.

RESPONSIBLE ACTS TOWARDS THE SOCIETY
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN 2020
SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS
CULTURE AND EDUCATION
LOCAL COMMUNITIES
ACTIONS AGAINST DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
SOCIAL ORGANISATIONS

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Each year, the Agora Group's media and brands are actively involved in social campaigns and initiate a number of activities, campaigns and other projects that involve local communities and raise important social problems.

Key UN Sustainable Development Goals, which we implement as part of activities for the benefit of society:

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social responsibility

In 2020, as part of their social activities, the companies and media of the Agora Group primarily took initiatives to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland. The most important of them are presented in the section Our responsibility in the time of COVID-19 pandemic of this Report.

Simultaneously, long-term activities have continued under the social, educational, cultural and charity pillars, while at the same time new projects were being launched to fight against social exclusion, support local communities, protect health, and care for natural environment.

Examples of projects implemented in 2020 in these areas are presented below. To learn more about each of them, click on the selected title.
Details of all social activities taken in 2020 by the Agora Group can be found at www.agora.pl/responsible-business.

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The Agora Group's social activities are largely driven by the involvement of readers and recipients, employees and local communities in projects directly supporting social organisations and the promotion of philanthropy and charity. The products offered by the Group also include those whose social purpose is related to problems, issues and topics important to society.

An initiative influenced by, among others pandemic-COVID-19, was “Gazeta.pl's declaration for new times”. Gazeta.pl, as the first medium in Poland, in the face of the health, economic, political and climate crises intensifying in 2020, published a declaration committing itself to supporting its readers in accessing reliable information obtained at the source and addressing directly to experts: doctors, economists and other specialists who cooperate with the portal.

In addition to the promise to prepare reliable and proven news, in 2020 Gazeta.pl described current problems and was involved in important social issues. An example of the activities carried out is, among others the “Let's help Beirut together!” collection initiated by the portal after the August explosion in Beirut. Thanks to the support of Internet users, the portal managed to collect the amount of PLN 100,000. PLN and give it to the Polish Center for International Aid, which provided aid to the victims. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the editors of the portal have also been involved in helping people suffering from COVID-19, e.g. in April, together with readers, they funded a respirator for a hospital in Sucha Beskidzka.

On January 1, 2021, the “Gazeta.pl 2021 editorial declaration” was published, in which the editors undertook to focus especially on the defense of women's rights and the fight against social inequalities, as well as to act for environmental protection.

Agora's media engage readers and listeners in the joint fight for equality and human rights, by inviting them to specific projects. After the outbreak of nationwide protests caused by the ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal on tightening the abortion law at the end of October 2020, Agora's media initiated aid campaigns, expressing solidarity with the organisers and participants of the demonstrations. Gazeta Wyborcza and Wysokie Obcasy as part of a special campaign consisting in the sale of digital subscriptions have collected PLN 674,000 to support the Polish Women's Strike. The accumulated funds were allocated to help people being persecuted for participating in the protests. Radio TOK FM also encouraged its listeners to support the fight for women's rights by purchasing a TOK FM Premium subscription, the whole revenue for which was transferred to the Women's Rights Centre. The radio station reported events happening all over the country and invited listeners to discuss the problem on the air. In addition, as a gesture of support, the Gazeta.pl portal, Radio TOK FM, Wyborcza.pl and Wysokieobcasy.pl added to their logotypes the symbol of the strike – a red lightning.

In May 2020, AMS launched the action #AMSsupportCulture (#AMSwspieraKulturę) – a special offer for cultural institutions such as theaters, museums, cinemas, publishing houses and operas. Among others, in this way, for many years AMS has been supporting the cultural industries in information campaigns, offering unique discounts on the use of both clastic and digital media offered by the Agora Group company.

In January 2020, Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta.pl, Helios, Radio TOK FM, Rock Radio and other Agora brands once again supported the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity. During the 28th finals, the organization raised funds to ensure the highest diagnostic and treatment standards in pediatric interventional medicine. For this purpose, Agora's media and brands organized online auctions, collecting money for virtual cans and reporting on the finals.

Additionally, the editors of the Gazeta.pl portal reported live the finals of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity and – just like last year – organized the campaign #OneDayLonger (#JedenDzieńDłużej) exactly one week after the finals. In it, she encouraged internet users to further support the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity, incl. through unique auctions and fundraising on Facebook under the slogan “#OneDayLonger for the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity”.

In total, thanks to the actions of the media and brands from the Agora Group, we managed to collect over PLN 150 000.

Companies of the Agora Group also seek solutions aimed at providing access to their products and services by the largest possible number of customers, in particular by sensitive and excluded groups. For this purpose, in March 2020, a new section at Wyborcza.pl was launched with a slogan News from Poland which is aimed at foreigners staying in Poland and at persons not speaking Polish who are interested in events happening in our country. Here they will find guidance material on, among other things, safety rules during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as articles dedicated to the current events in Poland – all in English.

Since 1998, Agora has been publishing information about social campaigns, appeals and charity announcements about supporting sick children and about missing persons free of charge in its media. In 2020, Gazeta Wyborcza and its supplements published 170 materials supporting the objectives of 21 NGOs and assistance centres. Since 2015, Gazeta.pl has been publishing appeals to support collections for the benefit of sick children every year – there have been 52 of them in 2020.

Agora Radio Group offers similar support by providing free-of-charge information on social campaigns and charity collections in all of its radio stations – Radio Pogoda, Radio Złote Przeboje, Rock Radio and Radio TOK FM. Thus, in 2020, it managed to support 21 organisations and offer them air time with the pricelist value of more than PLN 18 500 000 net.

The social actions taken by us are regulated by the “Agora Group's Policy on social and sponsorship activities” adopted by the company's Management Board in 2016 after taking into account the expectations of the stakeholders. The objectives set out in the document refer to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030) and meet the ISO 26000 social responsibility standard.

The objectives set out in the document are:

education;
personal and social development;
shaping civic attitudes and care for human rights;
promotion of culture and universal access to it;
promotion of health and healthy lifestyle;
care for the natural environment;
social concern for others as expressed in charity and aid campaigns.

Agora Group's social and sponsoring activities reflect its care for the welfare of regions where the Group operates in order to make them suitable places for living, working and implementing own plans.

The wording of the document is available on the following website: www.agora.pl/en/social-and-sponsoring-activities-policy-at-agora-group.

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EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS

The pandemic also affected the educational activities organised by Agora, both for children and adolescents, and for adults.One of the examples of projects in this area is the educational platform, which, after closing of education institutions following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, was launched for secondary school students and teachers by the editorial office of Gazeta Wyborcza and Wyborcza.pl. It contains interesting texts and videos in history, physics, biology and chemistry, as well as materials for secondary school students taking the final examinations and for eight-graders preparing for their finals. Another example is “Math Counts” („Matematyka się liczy”) Festival, which Gazeta Wyborcza organised in 2020 for the 7th time, together with the mBank Foundation – because of the coronavirus, the last edition was held for the first time in its history only in a remote format. The annual objective of the initiative is to demonstrate how important mathematics is in our lives, and to prove that the way in which the “queen of science” is spoken of and taught is the basis for success.

In 2020, there was also a special edition of the programme promoting knowledge and initiatives for the development of new technologies entitled Tomorrow-nauts („Jutronauci”). The project was created in 2017 thanks to the cooperation between Gazeta Wyborcza and Sebastian Kulczyk. Its 4th edition – “Tomorrow-nauts 2020: The World After the Pandemic” („Jutronauci 2020: świat po pandemii”) was entirely devoted to reflecting on the consequences of changes the humanity must face after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Świat po pandemii

VIRTUAL MEETINGS AND CULTURAL EVENTS

Also as part of their cultural activities, Agora Group companies and brands supported and initiated aid projects in 2020 in response to the coronavirus crisis. To this end, among others, from March to May 2020, Agora's Publishing House, in cooperation with Gazeta.pl and Wyborcza.pl, conducted a series of cultural events on social media under the slogan #Culturalzone (#Kulturalnastrefa), which involved organising concerts and meetings with artists who, due to the pandemic, had to suspend their activities.

And although in 2020 the pandemic did not favour cultural events, as every year the Agora Group's media continued to promote culture and to talk about socially important issues. They also organised exceptional competitions and awarded prizes. Radio TOK FM, with the Anna Laszuk Award, once again distinguished courageous, unconventional actions which in the past year had a significant impact on public awareness or changed the Polish reality. Gazeta Wyborcza co-organised once again the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage, as well as the literary NIKE Award. Additionally, in 2020, the 3rd edition of the Krzysztof Miller photographic competition for the courage of seeing, which has been organised by Agencja Gazeta and Gazeta Wyborcza since 2018. AMS, as part of the promotion of social and cultural activities in 2020, for the 21st time organised a competition of the AMS Poster Gallery, whose slogan was: “Eleventh: You shall not produce garbage” („Jedenaste: Nie produkuj śmieci”). It was aimed at raising public awareness of the negative impact of humans on the natural environment.

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As part of their social activities, the Agora's media took a number of measures in 2020 to promote diversity in society. Some projects concerned sustainable cities and the lives of their inhabitants, as well as work and health protection in various regions of Poland.

One of such initiatives was the “Supercities” plebiscite („Supermiasta”), organised on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the first municipal election in the history of the Third Polish Republic. The readers and Internet users cast more than 39,000 votes in the plebiscite, indicating the greatest successes of their towns since 1990. An important part of the campaign included also publications dedicated to urban development and special magazines prepared by the editorial team, such as an edition issued at the end of September, the main subject of which was towns during the pandemic – how local governments and residents deal with the challenges of the recent months. In autumn Gazeta Wyborcza also invited Internet users to the launch of a new online programme “Supercites TV” („Supermiasta TV”), in which local government heads and journalists discussed live on the future of the development strategy for the coming years.

Another example of Agora's involvement is the “Under Good Care” („Pod dobra opieką”) which Gazeta Wyborcza created together mainly with the Main Chamber of Nurses and Midwives. It was a response to the challenges faced by healthcare staff, which, among others, lacks nurses and midwives in hospitals across Poland. The aim of the initiative was to discuss and attempt to find ways to change the public perception of the profession of a nurse and a midwife, promote these professions, improve the working conditions of midwives and nurses, and improve their relations with physicians and patients.As part of the campaign launched in 2020, Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy and Wyborcza.pl published articles and interviews with Polish representatives of the healthcare departments, Marshal's offices and medical universities, as well as the directors of hospitals, chairmen of the Regional Chamber of Nurses and Midwives in Poland, nurses and midwives and independent experts.

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An important area of Agora's media activity is the implementation of social projects, in particular those related to counteracting discrimination, violating human rights and helping the excluded and in need, as evidenced by numerous activities in this area presented below

For Agora, gender equality is a key element in building a civic and democratic community. An example is the activity of the brand Wysokie Obcasy – the magazine Gazeta Wyborcza, whose mission is to strengthen the participation and role of women in contemporary society. Apart from topics related to everyday life, inspiring interviews with people from the world of culture, science and public opinion, it also publishes materials that highlight social problems faced by women and excluded groups, e.g. by sexual orientation or gender identity. In addition, the editors of the magazine have been supporting their readers in professional, maternal and self-development struggles for over 20 years, breaking stereotypes both through texts and numerous social campaigns.

For example, in 2020 it was a series of meetings “Women know what they do” („Kobiety wiedzą co robią”) organized by the editors of Wysokie Obcasy and Gazeta Wyborcza, which since 2018 unites women from all over Poland. As part of the last edition of the Wysokie Obcasy and Wysokie Obcasy Praca series, together with State Street Bank, they carried out the #Fearless at Work („#Nieustraszona w pracy”) project aimed at supporting women who still have to fight equal treatment in the labor market.

Wysokie Obcasy and Gazeta Wyborcza also engage in numerous collaborations for gender equality. As part of one of them, in October 2020, for the first time in Poland, the journal published the results of the report on menstrual poverty in the world, commissioned by Kulczyk Foundation and Founders Pledge, an international philanthropist organization. As part of the initiative, the Internet service of Wysokie Obcasy provides information on menstrual hygiene and the consequences of its absence, as well as on how to prevent menstrual poverty.

Agora's media show solidarity with and support non-heteronormative people.

In 2020, i.a. the series “Rodzina +” of the Gazeta.pl portal dedicated to Polish LGBT+ families and presenting the stories of people deprived of the same rights as others due to different sexual orientation. Gazeta.pl has also prepared a document entitled “How to write about LGBT + people. A guide for the media” – on how to write and speak so as not to exclude and not discriminate against LGBT + people.

In August 2020, as a sign of solidarity with the LGBT+ community, the team of Gazeta Wyborcza added a poster with a rainbow flag to the paper edition of the daily – a symbol of tolerance and equality. In addition, the Wyborcza.pl website regularly publishes articles, comments and reports on the manifestations of discrimination and inequality as well as activities aimed at counteracting them.

Agora's media engage in cooperation to protect human rights and show solidarity with excluded people and those who fight for freedom of speech and life in a democratic world. An example is the unique multimedia report “Invisible” („Niewidzialni”) about Ukrainian employees used by employers in Poland and Germany. This project was created thanks to the cooperation of the editorial office of Gazeta Wyborcza with BuzzFeed News Germany. You can read the report here.

Gestures of solidarity could be seen in the media of Agora, among others in August 2020, when Gazeta Wyborcza, Wyborcza.pl and Wysokieobcasy.pl replaced their logotype with a white-red-white flag – a common symbol of protests following the last, rigged presidential elections in Belarus. A similar action was taken by the editors of Gazeta.pl, adding the slogan “Long live Belarus!” to the logotype (Żywie Biełaruś). And joining forces with the Outriders reporter collective as part of the “Belarusian dominoes” („Białoruskie domino”) project. As a sign of support for an important social cause, Gazeta Wyborcza also changed its logotype in September – childhood cancer awareness month. The daily became involved in the “Golden Ribbon” („Złota wskążka”) campaign aimed at increasing the awareness of pediatric oncology and supporting the effective treatment of sick children. During the campaign, the Wyborcza.pl website and Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy and Wysokie Obcasy Extra published texts about the challenges facing oncology and helping children suffering from cancer. Radio TOK FM was also the patron of the campaign.

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Agora is committed to promoting, inter alia, education, culture, art, journalism and the media, as well as equality between women and men. A large part of these activities is carried out by foundations created by the Management Board of Agora S.A. and by other companies of the Agora Group. Our employees also sit on the councils and boards of other philanthropic organisations. Below we are briefly presenting the key ones.

Fundacja Agory

The Agora Foundation was founded in October 2004. Since 2005, it has been a public benefit organisation. In the recent years, the Agora Foundation has been focusing on co-organising and financing social campaigns with Gazeta Wyborcza and engaging in charity activities.

The activities of the Agora Foundation, which are often supported by Agora's media, including Gazeta Wyborcza, date back a long time ago. The breakthrough campaign “Childbirth with Dignity” („Rodzić po ludzku”), “Treatment with Dignity” („Leczyć po ludzku”) and “Narco-Poles” („Narkopolacy”), or “Help Your Parents” („Pomóż swoim rodzicom), which supports the development of elderly care volunteering, are activities that have been carried out thanks to collections of 1% of tax. In 2020, among other things, the project “Different People, One World” („Różni ludzie, jeden świat”) was implemented to support people with disabilities in their professional development. Detailed information on the Agora Foundation's activities are available at: www.fundacjaagory.pl.

Fundacja Gazety Wyborczej

The Gazeta Wyborcza Foundation was created by Agora in 2018. Similarly as The New York Times Company and The Guardian Media Group, the publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza has created a non-profit organisation to develop valuable media projects and pursue important societal objectives.

The Foundation's objectives are, among others, to contribute to the emergence of independent and ambitious journalistic materials on key social and political issues, such as investigative reports, environmental reports and international journalistic projects. The Foundation's current projects can be found at: www.fundacjagazetywyborczej.pl/en.

Wysokie obcasy logo

Also in 2018, Agora, together with the Wysokie Obcasy brand, created the Wysokie Obcasy Foundation. Its aim is to support independent and reliable journalism and to fight social inequality and discrimination, or to protect and promote women's rights. More information about the Foundation's activities can be found at: www.fundacjawysokichobcasow.pl/en.

“Integration Academy Foundation. Work. Education. Sport.” was created by AMS S.A. in 2013 and is a continuation of the “AMS for Integration” project. The Foundation deals with broadly understood problems and issues relating to the life, activity and social role of people with disabilities, with a particular focus on work, education and sport. The Foundation's originators and employees are fencers on wheelchairs, outstanding athletes, Paralympians, multiple World and European Championship medalists, who, together with other AMS employees, implement the Foundation's ideas on a voluntary basis. In 2020, the Foundation implemented a number of its own actions and those executed in cooperation with private and public entities. For information on the Foundation's current projects, please visit: www.akademiaintegracji.pl.

Foundation for Universal Reading was created in 2018 by the founders, including Agora as well as Agora Publishing House, institutions related to the world of books and individuals operating within its structures. The alarming results of the research on the readership level in Poland were the impetus for joint action; that is why the Foundation's goal is to promote reading – especially among children and their parents. Małgorzata Skowrońska, publishing director at Agora's Publishing House, is one of the members of the Foundation Board. The Foundation's projects implemented in 2020 can be found on the Foundation's website: www.fpc.org.pl.

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