The Viña Ardanza Solidario cooperation programme was one of the two winning projects in the fourth edition of the CaixaBank Solidarity Awards held yesterday in Madrid. The philanthropic initiative, promoted by La Rioja Alta, S.A., shared the award with Fundació Ave Maria. They won out over the more than one hundred candidates submitted in 2021 to these awards that highlight the philanthropic activity of the financial institution's private banking customers.

Maite de Aranzabal, Director of La Rioja Alta, S.A. and head of Viña Ardanza Solidario, was in charge of receiving an award of €5,000 that “we will use to co-fund a fifth agricultural project this year, in Benin in this case, which we will complement with contributions from directors, shareholders and employees to reach the €16,000 required by the project.” This “amount will be added to the more than €121.000 that we have already contributed this year to four exciting initiatives in the D.R. Congo, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Kenya.” 

At the award ceremony, presented by the television chefs Jordi Cruz, Pepe Rodríguez and Samantha Vallejo-Nágera, Aranzabal expressed her satisfaction and gratitude for this award and assured that “I don't believe that we are doing anything exceptional in La Rioja Alta, S.A., in the sense that we think  it is the duty of all companies with profits to donate a part of them. “Public administrations hardly give any money. We stand at 0.2% of GDP, and it is terrible how little we help those who have not been lucky enough to be in our position,” she said.  

Founded in 2007, Viña Ardanza Solidario is a philanthropic initiative of La Rioja Alta, S.A. winery group through which it donates 1% of its net profits annually to agricultural projects in impoverished countries, mainly in Africa. Since then, the total amount contributed by the Haro House is close to 1.5 million euros. This is an important amount that will continue to grow thanks to the new call for 2022 to start on January 1.