It is natural to want to help people who have been hit by disaster.

After the Asian tsunami, we realised that we could do a lot more to help if we acted in a forward thinking way. So we became one of the first organisations to sign up to the Oxfam 365 Alliance. Oxfam is one of the UK's most respected aid agencies, and the Oxfam 365 Alliance enables organisations such as ours to give long-term strategic support to Oxfam's emergencies work. To join the Oxfam 365 Alliance, companies must commit to providing between 500,000 and 1m over three years.

We are helping to keep Oxfam in a state of constant preparedness, so that it can always respond immediately to emergencies - wherever they next occur. The money that we donate goes into Oxfam's Catastrophe Fund, from which the charity draws continually to save lives. We are also supporting an ever-expanding team of emergencies experts, and helping to run the warehouse in Oxfordshire, which can hold 1.7million worth of essential equipment. This includes water-tank kits that, when assembled, hold 4.4 million litres; tap-stands and miles of piping; and 14,000 air-tight buckets that are essential for keeping drinking water uncontaminated.

With these resources Oxfam will be able to deal with disasters immediately, wherever and whenever they happen around the world. They will also be able to continue providing aid when the situation is no longer in the media spotlight. Our participation in the Oxfam 365 Alliance means that we are helping to strengthen Oxfam's hand in all its emergency work, when it really counts, at the outset. For Aviva, the Oxfam 365 Alliance is a perfect demonstration of forward thinking in practice.