CSR commitments

By donating thousands of products each year to partner associations, Maisons du Monde helps bring comfort and warmth to beneficiaries by furnishing welcoming and sustainable living spaces for all. Since 2022, we have helped create 83 inclusive living spaces, including 25 specifically dedicated to women in need.

As part of this initiative, Maisons du Monde contributed to the furnishing of several living spaces in 2024:

• La Cité Audacieuse (Fondation des Femmes) provides a space in Paris where women and associations can host events and conferences.
• The new shelter of the Collectif contre les violences familiales et l’exclusion (CVFE) in Belgium offers a safe place for 22 women and children who are victims of domestic violence.
• The Maison des Femmes de Meurthe-et-Moselle (Groupe SOS) welcomes women and their children who have experienced violence after their arrival at the Mont-Saint-Martin hospital.
• The “Un toit pour l’avenir” project (Fondation de l’Armée du Salut) provides a shelter in Reims for women fleeing domestic violence.
• The Maison des Femmes at Montpellier University Hospital (Fonds Guilhem) supports women who are victims of domestic and family violence, sexual assault, rape, or incest.
• Rehabilitated apartments in Asturias, Spain, by the Fundación Amaranta, provide safe housing for women who have experienced violence.
• The Maison des Femmes Marseille-Provence offers multidisciplinary support to women who are victims of violence or in vulnerable situations.
• The City Hall of Cachan (94) provides emergency shelter for women and children facing domestic violence.
• The RoseUp Houses in Paris and Bordeaux support women affected by cancer, helping them through their journey from diagnosis, during treatment, and up to a year after.

To enable its customers to take part in these efforts and highlight the work of partner associations, Maisons du Monde launches a solidarity candle every year, with all proceeds donated to the Fondation des Femmes. After the success of the edition illustrated by Agathe Singer in November 2024, a reissue has been available since March 5, 2025, to celebrate International Women’s Rights Day.

After 10 years of corporate philanthropy, Maisons du Monde strengthened its long-term commitment to forests and biodiversity by creating its Foundation in 2015. The Maisons du Monde Foundation provides financial support and guidance to grassroots associations working on the ground to preserve trees and forests alongside local communities. It also develops environmental awareness and nature reconnection programs.

Since 2023, François-Melchior de Polignac has been leading the Foundation as its president, further reinforcing its structure. Over the past 10 years, nearly €10 million have been allocated to 68 nonprofit projects worldwide. Two-thirds of these projects are funded through a percentage of Maisons du Monde’s annual revenue, while the remaining third comes from micro-donations made by Maisons du Monde customers at checkout in our French stores.

François-Melchior de Polignac, CEO of Maisons du Monde, assumed the presidency of the Maisons du Monde Foundation upon joining the company in 2023, succeeding Julie Walbaum. He is committed to continuing the Foundation’s initiatives launched since 2015 to protect forests and biodiversity.

In 2025, as the Maisons du Monde Foundation celebrates its 10th anniversary, the focus on environmental preservation will be particularly emphasized among both customers and employees of the brand.

Peru is home to 13% of the Amazon rainforest, second only to Brazil. The deforestation there is the result of the precarious position of local populations who transform the rainforest floor for agricultural exports (such as coffee or cocoa) or for subsistence agriculture. The forest is thus being depleted as agriculture expands.

In its efforts to halt this process of deforestation, Envol Vert is launching a regional project to assist local agricultural cooperatives and forest conservation teams in developing practices for the sustainable management of natural resources.

The funds collected through Maisons du Monde customer donations to the ARRONDI en caisse scheme in 2023 will help:

• Convert the agricultural plots into agroforestry systems or reforest them;
• Train and empower participants in the harvesting, processing and marketing of forest products;
• Promote the preservation of the Peruvian Amazon by enhancing the capabilities of agricultural cooperatives and organisations working to protect the local forests;
• Monitor and protect nearly 40,000 hectares of forest with park wardens;
• Develop community action plans for the conservation of endangered species.

In Colombia, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range is one of the world's most important biodiversity hotspots for the conservation of protected species. But, today, but only 17% of its original forests remain. This region is also home to the Kogi, Wiwa and Arhuaco indigenous populations. As a result of colonisation, coca cultivation and drug trafficking, these groups were gradually stripped of their lands. That's why Tchendukua decided to act.

With initial support from the Maisons du Monde Foundation between 2018 and 2020, the association has taken important steps to enable the Kogi and Wiwa peoples to recover their ancestral lands. The initial goal of the partnership, based on the acquisition of 170 hectares of ancestral land in the Mendihuaca River Valley, has now been comfortably met, with 685 hectares having been being recovered. This has resulted in 700 people being resettled on their land! To take the project even further, the Maisons du Monde Foundation has renewed its partnership with the association until 2024.

The funds collected through customer donations to the ARRONDI en caisse scheme will help:  

• Support the Kogi, Wiwa and Arhuaco in recovering a further 250 hectares of land at least, by providing training on legal processes.
• Assist between 15 and 20 families settle in, regenerate biodiversity and transfer ancestral knowledge to younger generations.
• Promote dialogue between indigenous and non-indigenous people to raise awareness of the need to preserve these cultures and ecosystems.

For more information, visit the project page on the MDM Foundation website or the association's website.