Infostud is the winner of the “VIRTUS 2009” award for corporative philanthropy in the category of small and medium companies. This traditional annual award is given to those companies that have distinguished themselves by supporting some social or non-profitable movement or organization, while Infostud got recognized for a overall contribution in the field of employment and education in Serbia. Stating the reasons behind this award, the panel especially emphasized Infostud’s project that promoted the need for employment of disable people, the project “Evaluation of the job finding process” and “The best employer 2008” research and competition. Beside these, Infostud’s victory was also based on the results of the published professional brochures for employment and team leadership in crisis, which were freely distributed, and also for the promotion of the idea of informal education in Serbia.

What comes around goes around
The manager and one of the Infostud’s founders, Stefan Salom, during the award ceremony, said: “Ever since Infostud was founded, we aimed to make our work leave a positive mark not only on us, our employees and clients, but also on our society. Simply put, we believed, and to my great pleasure, we still believe that what comes around goes around. Since the beginning we have worked to keep this phrase from becoming just empty words on paper, but rather something that we truly use in every day business and in every company sector. It was only later that we learned that such principles have a proper name – corporate responsibility. For all these reasons, the VIRTUS award is especially dear to us because it proves that we successfully implement and use that for which we stand for.”

Beside Infostud, the VIRTUS award was also given to the Radio Television company B92 for their contribution to philanthropy on a national level, Eurobank EFG for the contribution to the local community, Erste bank for their support to the most innovative project of the year and to the Societe Generale bank for their long term partnership between business and non-profit sector.

Forty six companies and organizations that work in Serbia, entered the competition, having nominated forty nine projects.

The members of the panel for the VIRTUS award were: Ivan Vejvoda, the CEO of Balkan Trust for Democracy, Ana Firtel Vlajic, the CEO of the Foreign Investors Council, Biljana Stepanovic from Business Info Group, Bozidar Andrejic, the editor of the Ekonom:east magazine, Milos Djajic, the president of the PR association of Serbia and Snezana and Vlade Divac, the founders of the Humanitarian organization Divac.

The VIRTUS award, this year for the third time in a row, was given by the Balkan Community Initiatives Fund (BCIF), with the financial help of USAID program for Strengthening democracy and economic security and in the organization of Institute for Sustainable Communities (OSC). A significant support in the realization of the VIRTUS award was given by the Rockefeller Brothers fund, as well as other partners. The special guests at this years ceremony were Tomica Milosavljevic, the Minister of Health, Snezana Lakicevic Stojacic, the state secretary of the Ministry of labor and social politics, Troy Pederson, Deputy chief of mission of the USA embassy in Belgrade, as well as Radovan Jelasic, the governor of the National bank of Serbia.