Daily CSR https://www.dailycsr.com/ us 2026-09-09T08:59:18+02:00 tag:https://www.dailycsr.com,2026:rss-97891012 MetLife Foundation: Global Giving, Sustainability & Community Impact Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:56:00 +0200 us Debashish Mukherjee MetLife Foundation: Global Giving, Sustainability & Community Impact
MetLife and MetLife Foundation support stronger, more resilient communities through philanthropy, employee volunteering and a range of community-focused initiatives. These efforts complement the company’s environmental responsibilities, creating an integrated approach to improving social, economic and environmental well-being.

Advancing Economic Mobility Through Grants

Since its establishment in 1976, MetLife Foundation has provided more than $1 billion in philanthropic support to communities worldwide. Its grantmaking is focused on advancing inclusive economic mobility, particularly by addressing the challenges faced by people with low incomes. The Foundation directs its funding through three strategic areas of giving.

Among the grants awarded in 2025 were:
  • Sesame Workshop: Funding a worldwide emotional well-being program designed to help young children and their families develop skills for recognizing and managing emotions. The initiative also helps service providers recognize indicators of more serious mental health concerns.
  • Sponsors for Educational Opportunity: Supporting the Growing Emerging Talent in Insurance Initiative, which seeks to close early-career talent and knowledge gaps within the U.S. insurance sector. The program provides high-performing undergraduate students who face financial or other barriers with the knowledge and skills needed to pursue careers in insurance and build long-term financial security.
  • Entrepreneurial Training for Innovative Communities: Supporting an 18-month entrepreneurship initiative in Japan delivered through a partner organization. The program assists early-stage entrepreneurs through mentoring, consulting, capacity building and customized guidance designed to improve their business capabilities.
  • King’s Trust: Helping young people in the U.K. strengthen their confidence, develop workplace skills and prepare for employment. The organization’s foundational programs support young people who have experienced complex challenges or left education, helping them develop essential capabilities such as communication, teamwork and resilience.
In 2025, MetLife Foundation awarded $31.5 million in grants worldwide. Fundación MetLife México and MetLife Korea Foundation, which both marked their 20th anniversaries, collectively contributed an additional $1.4 million.

Expanding Youth Opportunities Through Soccer

MetLife and MetLife Foundation are using the worldwide popularity of soccer as a platform to create safer places for children and young people to play while expanding access to sports and other opportunities.

Through its partnership with the U.S. Soccer Foundation, MetLife Foundation supports initiatives aimed at improving community health, encouraging physical activity and promoting youth development. These include:
  • Soccer Will: Transforming Health: Developing mini-pitches in underserved communities and organizing events that bring local residents together.
  • Yes, Coach!: Increasing the availability of qualified coach-mentors by expanding the national training pipeline.
  • Soccer for Success After School: Supporting young people through a combination of physical activity, educational support and mentorship.
  • Just Ball: Creating accessible and inclusive neighborhood soccer leagues that encourage participation, social connections and community engagement.
MetLife Foundation has also established partnerships with other organizations to use soccer as a vehicle for community development.
  • The Place Institute: Through its Paint Your Court initiative, community soccer spaces are being revitalized through public art, participatory design and locally driven activities. Early funding supported projects in Mexico, with expansion planned for Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay. The initiative is intended to improve public spaces while strengthening communities and supporting physical, mental and social well-being.
  • FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund: As one of the Fund’s founding donors, MetLife Foundation is helping grassroots organizations expand access to education and sports while working to improve educational outcomes for children. This effort complements MetLife’s three-year partnership with Global Citizen, which combines financial support, employee volunteering and the company’s international reach to advance initiatives focused on education and economic empowerment.

Responding to Disasters

MetLife, MetLife Foundation and employees provide support for disaster preparedness, emergency response and recovery efforts in communities around the world. MetLife Foundation participates in the American Red Cross Disaster Responder program and contributes to the CARE Humanitarian Surge Fund, which helps communities prepare for disasters and respond to urgent needs when crises occur.

In 2025, MetLife Foundation provided assistance following the California wildfires, severe flooding in Texas and other major storms across the United States. Its response included employee donation-matching campaigns benefiting the American Red Cross and Team Rubicon, which mobilizes military veterans to assist communities affected by humanitarian emergencies.

The Foundation also supported World Central Kitchen, which provides freshly prepared meals to people affected by disasters and other emergencies.

MetLife’s disaster-support efforts extend beyond Foundation grants. In the U.S., MetLife Legal Plans provides eligible Legal Plans customers’ employees affected by natural disasters with complimentary attorney consultations and document reviews, regardless of whether those employees are enrolled in the plan.

The American Red Cross recognized MetLife Foundation as a 2025 Disaster Relief Hero, acknowledging its humanitarian leadership and disaster-response efforts.

Protecting Biodiversity and Natural Ecosystems

The strength and resilience of communities are closely linked to the condition of the natural environments in which people live. MetLife’s environmental stewardship strategy therefore includes efforts to conserve biodiversity, protect ecosystems and promote responsible management of natural resources.

In the U.S., MetLife’s beehive initiatives support pollinator populations while giving employees opportunities to learn about and participate in biodiversity-related activities. In Australia, MetLife renewed its partnership with the Botanic Gardens of Sydney to support the Rainforest Seed Conservation Project, a research initiative focused on conserving rainforest seeds and understanding the effects of climate change.

MetLife has set an objective of planting 5 million trees worldwide by 2030, with particular attention to regions that are vulnerable to natural disasters. Together, MetLife and MetLife Foundation support reforestation through funding for large-scale programs in national and state forests, providing trees to homeowners in disaster-affected communities and organizing employee tree-planting activities around the world.

Since 2020, MetLife and MetLife Foundation have planted 2.9 million trees.
Tree planting is also incorporated into several initiatives that recognize and engage employees, customers and communities. MetLife plants a tree for every new employee hired globally. In the U.S. and selected Asian markets, trees are also planted to commemorate full-time employees’ service anniversaries. In certain markets, tree planting may additionally be linked to product purchases or customers choosing paperless communications.

Through MetLife Legacy Trees, the company plants a tree in memory of each individual for whom MetLife has paid a Group Life Insurance benefit.

MetLife and MIM also originate investments designed to contribute to biodiversity conservation and healthier ecosystems.

MetLife School Forest in Korea

As part of its goal of planting 5 million trees by 2030, MetLife is helping create school forests in Korea. These green spaces provide children in urban areas with opportunities to interact directly with nature and learn about local ecosystems.

The most recent school forest was created at an elementary school in Seoul with assistance from the MetLife Korea Foundation.

MetLife employee volunteers helped establish the site by planting more than 1,000 trees and endangered plants. The forest includes native Korean species such as Busan tail grass and the Misun tree. Students can also explore features including a tree-bark and tree-ring observation platform, an insect hotel and trees used for mushroom cultivation.

Employee Volunteering

Employee volunteering forms an important part of MetLife’s efforts to create resilient and thriving communities. Throughout the year, employees contribute their time, knowledge and professional skills to initiatives addressing a broad range of social and environmental needs.
Volunteer activities include mentoring and coaching, education, environmental conservation, financial wellness, food security and skills-based or pro bono projects that draw on employees’ professional expertise.

Some of the company’s major global initiatives include:
  • Signature Days of Service: A global volunteering program that brings employees together at important points during the year to address community priorities. In 2025, activities included financial literacy initiatives, collaboration with community organizations and family-oriented volunteer opportunities, alongside partnerships with MetLife’s MOMENTUM Networks.
  • Skills For Impact Program: Employees use their professional expertise to help nonprofit organizations improve their financial management, data capabilities and operational effectiveness. These one-day projects are designed to produce practical solutions while strengthening nonprofits’ ability to serve their communities.
  • Environmental Stewardship: Through Our Green Impact, MetLife’s voluntary environmental employee-engagement program, employees take part in activities such as litter cleanups, tree planting and Green Teams, both in person and virtually. For the fourth consecutive year, employees also worked with the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Cleantech to Market program, assisting graduate student teams as they work to accelerate the commercialization of technologies addressing climate challenges.

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A recent study published in Oceanography concludes that almost every global coral bleaching episode recorded over the last four decades would not have occurred without human-induced climate change.

Although El Niño is frequently identified as the main trigger of widespread bleaching events—including those in 1998, 2010, 2014–2017, and 2018–2025—the research shows that the underlying cause is the long-term rise in ocean temperatures driven by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. Scientists employed a multi-model extreme event attribution approach to determine the contribution of climate change to sea surface temperature increases. These findings were then integrated with NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch bleaching risk model, revealing a strong connection between anthropogenic climate change and elevated coral bleaching risk.

For the 2018–2025 global bleaching event, the study found that widespread bleaching would have been virtually absent in a world without human-caused climate change. Among the 71 regions where bleaching occurred, only one would have experienced even a moderate level of bleaching risk under natural climate conditions. Similar conclusions were reached for previous global bleaching events, indicating that climate change consistently pushed ocean temperatures beyond the threshold at which corals begin to bleach.

Andrew Pershing, Chief Program Officer at Climate Central and the study’s lead author, emphasized that coral bleaching would otherwise remain an uncommon and localized occurrence rather than a global phenomenon. He warned that millions of people depend on healthy coral reefs for food security, coastal protection, and economic livelihoods, yet continued carbon emissions are causing extensive degradation of these ecosystems. According to Pershing, rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are essential to prevent the widespread loss of coral reefs.

The researchers also applied the same analytical framework to assess bleaching risks associated with the ongoing 2026–2027 El Niño event. While El Niño alone may generate limited bleaching in certain regions, the combination of El Niño and human-driven ocean warming is expected to produce extensive bleaching worldwide. Areas considered particularly vulnerable include the southern Caribbean, the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of Central and South America, and the coastal waters of eastern Asia.

The study further highlights that global coral bleaching has often been linked primarily to El Niño, whereas the dominant influence of long-term climate change has received less attention. The analysis indicates that, if current warming trends continue, the effect of human-induced ocean warming will surpass the influence of El Niño across all coral reef regions by 2028.

Overall, the findings reinforce growing evidence that coral reefs are facing increasing threats despite their limited capacity to adapt to rising temperatures. Without significant reductions in carbon emissions and effective climate action, continued ocean warming could result in the irreversible decline and eventual disappearance of coral reef ecosystems worldwide.

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