Turning business successes into social commitment: Ooms Bouw & Ontwikkeling finds it important to make an active contribution to society. They do this by sponsoring local associations. In addition, they support charities that are important to employees.
For this article, we speak with director Piet-Jan Ooms. He tells us more about what exactly Ooms Bouw & Ontwikkeling does and how the organization came into contact with the PLN Foundation. “That happened, as with most people probably, in a nasty way,” Piet-Jan explains.
Collapsed during soccer
One of their employees, Michèl Rood, account and development manager at Ooms Construction & Development, collapsed in 2016 while playing soccer. “He was resuscitated with a Lucas automatic but this failed. During CPR, he bruised his ribs with it. After hospitalization, Michèl was found to be a carrier of the PLN mutation.”
Michèl’s father contacted the company to share the news. “Are you comfortable?” his father asked before he began. In the end, Michèl was out of the running for a few months. He had lost pieces of his life and had to take things up again. “When it became known that Michèl was a carrier of the PLN mutation, we came to the foundation via-via. The choice was quickly made: we are going to sponsor this foundation annually,” Piet-Jan says.
Collaboration with PLN Foundation
The organization began sponsoring the foundation three years ago and has renewed that sponsorship for three years. “We want to give heart to a good employee and help future heirs with this. It literally hits us in the heart.”
Ooms Construction & Development is a sponsor of several projects. For example, an employee has MS, so the organization also sponsors the MS Fund. “We also sponsor, for example, local associations that our employees are involved in,” Piet-Jan explains. The social commitment from Ooms Construction & Development is to the employees, but they also feel it is important to contribute to society.
Ooms construction & development
What exactly does the organization do? “We have been in existence for 111 years this year and are a real family business. So we are responsible for the serial new construction of homes and utility buildings such as schools, commercial buildings or sheds with offices attached,” Piet-Jan explains. An established name in the industry, with a fine track record of building on its existing success.
In any case, we are extremely grateful to Ooms Bouw & Ontwikkeling for their support, effort and commitment to the PLN Foundation. Through this sponsorship, we can ensure that more scientific research is done on PLN. The more funding there is for research, the faster affordable treatment gets closer.
Do you also want to combine business success with community involvement? We enjoy working together. Find out more about foundation sponsorship opportunities here.