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Message from Our CEODear Stakeholders, Over its 85-year history, The Walt Disney Company has brought great stories, characters and experiences to children and families the world over while endeavoring to be an organization that people want to invest in, work for, live near and do business with. While there's always room for improvement, we seek to be a good corporate citizen and hope to be as admired for the way we do business as for the quality of the family entertainment we create. There are good reasons for doing so. A strong commitment to corporate responsibility makes our brands and products more attractive. It strengthens our bonds with consumers. It makes our Company a more desirable place to work. And it builds goodwill in the communities in which we operate. All of this adds shareholder value. There is something deeper too. Many years ago, Walt Disney spoke of the "awesome responsibility" he felt as a "shaper of the world of tomorrow." Children and families are at the heart of so much of what we do at Disney, which is why setting positive examples through the entertainment and experiences we produce is critical to our business approach. Disney has a wonderful legacy of charitable giving, of volunteerism and of environmental stewardship. We have long been a major supporter of children's hospitals and wish-granting organizations around the world. We just celebrated the 25th anniversary of our VoluntEARS program, through which our Cast Members and employees have donated more than 5 million hours to the betterment of their communities. And, for over a decade, our Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund has supported habitat preservation and efforts to save endangered species. Our approach to corporate responsibility extends beyond philanthropy. Two years ago, we decided to associate our brands and characters with a range of healthy food items, an initiative that has been received enthusiastically by our Guests and consumers. Families appreciated that we had their best interests at heart while the creation of a promising new business helps promote shareholder value. In this report, we have set out to provide greater detail and insight into how we approach crucial corporate responsibility issues. As I've noted, many of our programs and policies in these areas are longstanding and have already resulted in substantial benefits. But the report is set against the backdrop of substantial change in the way we view corporate responsibility and amid a push to integrate our many efforts across all businesses and around the world. At Disney, we produce all kinds of creative content for different media platforms across multiple geographical and cultural boundaries. We run vast theme parks and resorts that serve tens of thousands of Guests daily on three continents. And we are the largest licensor of manufactured goods in the world, with products ranging from fine furniture to plush toys that bear the Disney name. Our impact, in other words, is diverse and substantial. To get things right, we take many different approaches. Our Corporate Responsibility team has developed a cohesive strategy for the company with that in mind, incorporating existing outreach, safety, nutrition, environmental and labor programs and working with executives across Disney, ABC and ESPN to coordinate and strengthen our company-wide efforts. They've organized our approach around five broad areas - Children & Family, Content & Products, Environment, Community and Workplaces – with the goal of further embedding corporate responsibility into Disney's business DNA, making sure it continues to be taken into consideration in decisions big and small. We're enthusiastic about making our corporate responsibility efforts even more effective. Our approach has been guided by Disney's enduring principles of integrity, optimism and decency as well as a results-oriented strategy that we believe can lead to steady improvements in the way we do business. This report is the first major snapshot of our efforts, one in which we point to our successes and identify areas where we can still do better. It is, in other words, the opening step in a long journey to greater transparency and accountability, and one which we hope you will find illuminating. We're really proud to be sharing all this information with you in a single place and hope you'll let us know what you think. Sincerely,
Robert A. Iger  |