History

From a small program for "our" Children’s Village in Romania to the worldwide McKinsey for Children charity

The story of McKinsey for Children goes back to 1990. After the fall of the Ceauşescu regime in Romania, some of our people wanted to support the initiative of Ion Tiriac, a former tennis player and manager, to found the first private Romanian children’s home on the outskirts of Brasov, his hometown. In 1995, a group of McKinsey employees launched Kinderhilfe Rumänien e.V., a registered charity, to provide financial support to the Children’s Village, which was the start of McKinsey for Children.

Along with the expansion of projects beyond Romania, the name of the charity was changed to McKinsey Kinderhilfe e.V. in 2006. Back then, the charity was run mostly by members of the German McKinsey office until, at the end of 2009, the Swiss McKinsey office decided to also register McKinsey for Children as a charity in Switzerland. To support the internationalization of the charity also in non-German speaking countries, we changed the name once more to McKinsey for Children.