ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
Enabling a vibrant and future-ready workforce for young people and adults;
2025 Sustainability report
Strengthening Our Communities
For Our Communities
MetLife and MetLife Foundation’s giving and volunteerism help strengthen the resilience of the communities we serve. This work complements our environmental stewardship efforts, forming a cohesive approach to helping communities thrive in multiple ways.
Driving Economic Mobility Through Grantmaking
MetLife Foundation contributes significantly to communities, with over $1 billion in giving since its inception in 1976. The Foundation seeks to drive inclusive economic mobility by addressing the needs of people with low income around the world, making grants across three strategic giving portfolios:
Strategic Giving Portfolios
FINANCIAL HEALTH
Connecting individuals to tools and resources that enable financial stability through savings, asset building and protection; and
RESILIENT COMMUNITIES
Enabling well-being that allows for a thriving, resilient and sustainable future for all.
Examples of grants in 2025 include:
- Sesame Workshop: Deliver a global emotional well-being initiative that equips young children and families with skills to understand and manage emotions, while helping providers identify signs of serious mental health challenges;
- Sponsors for Educational Opportunity: Support the Growing Emerging Talent in Insurance Initiative to address the early-career talent and knowledge gaps in the U.S. insurance industry by equipping high-achieving undergraduates who need support with building essential skills and knowledge for insurance careers and wealth-building;
- Entrepreneurial Training for Innovative Communities: Implement an 18‑month entrepreneurship program delivered via a partner organization that provides early‑stage founders in Japan with capacity building, mentorship, consultation and tailored support to strengthen their business capabilities; and
- King’s Trust: Support young people in the U.K. to build their confidence and skills and get ready for work. The charity's foundational programs help those facing complex challenges and who have left education to develop the fundamentals—such as communications, working with others and resilience—so they can progress into positive outcomes.
In 2025, MetLife Foundation made $31.5 million in total grants globally. Fundación MetLife México and MetLife Korea Foundation—both celebrating their 20th anniversaries—contributed $1.4 million collectively.
MetLife and MetLife Foundation are harnessing the global momentum around soccer to create safe spaces for play and expand opportunity for youth sports. The Foundation’s partnership with the U.S. Soccer Foundation advances community health, wellness and youth development through:
- Soccer Will: Transforming Health: Creating mini‑pitches in under‑resourced communities and hosting local engagement events;
- Yes, Coach!: Expanding the pipeline of trained coach‑mentors nationwide;
- Soccer for Success After School: Empowering youth through structured physical activity, education and mentorship; and
- Just Ball: Providing inclusive, accessible neighborhood leagues that promote connection and participation.
In addition, MetLife Foundation’s partnerships include:
- The Place Institute: Paint Your Court is a regional initiative revitalizing community soccer spaces through public art, participatory design and community‑led activation. Initial grants focused on courts in Mexico with plans to expand in Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay. These efforts will revitalize public spaces, strengthen communities and promote physical, mental and social well-being.
- FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund: As a founding donor to the Fund, MetLife Foundation is helping expand access to quality education and sports by supporting grassroots organizations focused on improving learning outcomes for children. The Foundation’s collaboration is in addition to MetLife’s three-year partnership with Global Citizen to provide financial support, employee volunteerism and global reach to drive transformative initiatives in education and economic empowerment.
Disaster Relief
MetLife, MetLife Foundation and our employees support disaster response around the globe. MetLife Foundation is a member of the American Red Cross Disaster Responder program and contributes to the CARE Humanitarian Surge Fund, which helps communities with disaster preparedness and immediate disaster response.
In 2025, MetLife Foundation provided disaster relief immediately following the California wildfires, devastating Texas floods and other widespread storms in the U.S. These included employee donation match programs with the American Red Cross and Team Rubicon, an organization that mobilizes veterans to help people affected by humanitarian crises. MetLife Foundation also donated to World Central Kitchen, an organization that provides fresh meals to people in need during disasters.
In addition to grantmaking from MetLife Foundation, MetLife addresses disaster recovery through our products and services. In the U.S., MetLife Legal Plans offers free attorney document review and consultation to Legal Plans customers’ employees who are impacted by natural disasters, whether or not the employees are enrolled in the plan.
The American Red Cross honored MetLife Foundation as a 2025 Disaster Relief Hero for demonstrating exceptional humanitarian leadership in the face of devastating disasters.
Protecting Nature and Biodiversity
Community resilience often is impacted by the health of the natural environment and ecosystems in which we live. MetLife’s commitment to environmental stewardship and responsible resource management includes initiatives that protect and enhance biodiversity and healthy ecosystems. Our beehive programs in the U.S. support pollinators and offer employee engagement opportunities around biodiversity. In Australia, MetLife renewed our partnership with the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, supporting the organization’s Rainforest Seed Conservation Project, a research project focused on preserving rainforest seeds and addressing the impacts of climate change.
MetLife aspires to plant 5 million trees around the world by 2030, prioritizing areas vulnerable to natural disasters. MetLife and MetLife Foundation support tree planting through financial support to large-scale reforestation programs in national and state forests, distributing trees to homeowners in communities impacted by disasters and sponsoring employee volunteer planting projects globally.
MetLife and MetLife Foundation have planted 2.9 million trees since 2020.
We also use tree-planting projects to educate and celebrate our people, customers and the community. MetLife plants a tree for each new hire across the globe and, in the U.S. and select markets in Asia, we honor full-time employees by planting a tree to commemorate their service anniversaries. We may also plant trees for product sales or for customers opting into paperless communications in certain markets. Through MetLife Legacy Trees™, we plant a tree in honor of each loved one for whom MetLife has paid a Group Life Insurance benefit.1
MetLife and MIM also originate investments that support biodiversity and healthy ecosystems.
MetLife School Forest Established in Korea
In support of our aspiration to plant 5 million trees by 2030, MetLife helps establish school forests in Korea, where children in urban centers can see, touch and learn about nature. The latest school forest was established with the support of the MetLife Korea Foundation at an elementary school in the market’s capital, Seoul.
MetLife employee volunteers helped plant more than 1,000 trees and endangered plants to establish the forest, including Korean native plants, such as Busan tail grass and the Misun tree. The forest also features a tree bark and ring observation platform, insect hotel and mushroom cultivation trees.
Employee Volunteering
Volunteering is a core part of MetLife’s commitment to building resilient, thriving communities around the world. Employees across regions contribute their time and talents throughout the year, supporting a wide range of community needs and purpose‑driven initiatives. Employees engage in activities spanning mentoring, coaching, education, environmental action, financial wellness and food security, along with skills‑based and pro bono projects that leverage their professional expertise.
2025 Global Volunteering by the Numbers
More than 160,000
employee volunteer hours
37
markets
Key global highlights include:
- Signature Days of Service: Our global engagement opportunity that unites employees during key moments of the year to address pressing community issues. In 2025, these efforts included advancing financial literacy, partnering with community networks and creating family‑friendly volunteering experiences, and involved partnerships with our MOMENTUM Networks.
- Skills For Impact Program: This program allowed employees to apply their business skills to help nonprofits strengthen their financial, data and operational capabilities. These one‑day engagements create practical solutions that enhance nonprofit effectiveness and community impact.
- Environmental stewardship: Through Our Green Impact, MetLife’s voluntary environmental employee engagement program, employees participate in on‑site and virtual environmental activities, such as litter clean-ups, tree planting and volunteer Green Teams. In addition, for the fourth consecutive year, employees collaborated with the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Cleantech to Market program, helping graduate student teams accelerate the commercialization of climate‑focused technologies.
