Colgate's success is founded on the Company's core values of Caring, Continuous Improvement and Global Teamwork. Evident in all aspects of our business, these values are the driving force behind everything we do. They are the reason for our commitment to providing safe, high quality products that enhance the lives of consumers around the world. These values fuel our successful long-term efforts to increase shareholder return, and they guide our efforts to create a workplace where all Colgate people act with integrity and with respect for one another.

Given their overwhelming importance, our values are the logical focus for this report outlining Colgate's social, environmental, and economic performance and our enduring respect for the people and the world around us. As we begin sharing this information more broadly, our goal is to communicate the nature of our business operations, our commitment to people and their development, the impact of our values on our activities, and our support for the communities in which we live and work. As we expand our global data collection regarding our social, environmental, and economic performance as well as other sustainability indicators, we expect our reports to grow and evolve. We understand that our work is never done and that we have opportunities for improvement. In subsequent reports, we will update you on these areas and show you how our value of Continuous Improvement has made a difference to our business, people, communities and the world around us.

In this first report about our values in action, you will see evidence of how Colgate people strive to simultaneously achieve business success and contribute to the global community. You will see that Colgate's commitment to its values includes consistent programs and processes around the world creating a global culture based upon integrity.

We strongly believe that our responsibility to promote shareholder interest includes our duty to act responsibly in all aspects of our business. Our values have been and will continue to be our guide in fulfilling these duties to shareholders, Colgate people, consumers and all who depend upon us. We welcome your interest in these most important aspects of our Company.