csr

Author: csr-voice

  • AirAsia earns high praise with its (RED) corporate social responsibility project on HIV/AIDS

    AirAsia earns high praise with its (RED) corporate social responsibility project on HIV/AIDS

    All things being equal. They are not. AIDS is the leading cause of death among young women worldwide. Yet it is treatable. Every two minutes, a teenager is infected with HIV. Yet it is preventable. Today 500 babies will be born with HIV. Same thing tomorrow. And the next day. AIDS no longer has

    “All things being equal. They are not. AIDS is the leading cause of death among young women worldwide. Yet it is treatable. Every two minutes, a teenager is infected with HIV. Yet it is preventable. Today 500 babies will be born with HIV. Same thing tomorrow. And the next day. AIDS no longer has to be a death sentence. One pill a day. For just 20 cents can stop mothers from passing on the virus to their babies. #EndAids.”

    The manifesto above comes from one of AirAsia’s global partners, (RED), a not-for-profit organisation based in the US, fighting for AIDS and HIV prevention around the world.

    Signing an agreement with the organisation at the end of 2018, AirAsia wanted to bring awareness to its message across the ASEAN region and develop products and activations to help raise and contribute funds to (RED) and the Global Fund.

    Using AirAsia’s reach and platform as an opportunity to raise funds for the cause, the company has dedicated the past year to designing key programmes; ensuring that all money raised goes towards supporting HIV/AIDS testing, counselling, treatment and prevention programmes.

    AirAsia’s year-long campaign included five potentially life-saving projects.

  • L&T Tech to give disaster resilient shelter homes to cyclone Fani hit people

    L&T Tech to give disaster resilient shelter homes to cyclone Fani hit people

    L&T Technology Services (LTTS) has launched a project ‘Neelachala’ a CSR program for providing disaster resilient shelter homes to those affected by cyclone Fani. As a part of the project Neelachala, LTTS will provide skill development programs for residents in various construction activities

    L&T Technology Services (LTTS) has launched a project ‘Neelachala’ a CSR program for providing disaster resilient shelter homes to those affected by cyclone Fani.

    As a part of the project Neelachala, LTTS will provide skill development programs for residents in various construction activities, the company said in a statement.

    The training provided by LTTS will ensure the affected people have an additional means of livelihood in the longer run.

    The company’s CEO and Managing Director Keshab Panda laid a foundation stone along with Puri District collector Balwant Singh.

    Puri collector said: “The people of Odisha have shown immense strength and resilience in recovering from the after-effects of cyclone Fani. This initiative undertaken by L&T Technology Services is a welcome step since rebounding from such a massive natural calamity requires contribution from all including the business community.”

    What makes the project Neelachala an unique CSR initiative, LTTS MD and CEO said is that in addition to providing shelters to those in need, the training that the company imparts as a part of this program enables the beneficiaries to attain financial independence.

    LTTS is a listed subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Limited focused on Engineering and R&D services. It has over 16,700 employees spread across 17 global design centers, 28 global sales offices and 49 innovation labs.

  • Govt gives nod to presecute in 366 CSR cases related offences

    Govt gives nod to presecute in 366 CSR cases related offences

    The government on Tuesday informed Parliament that it has so far given permission to prosecute in 366 cases related to CSR related offences. “So far, sanction for prosecution has been accorded in 366 cases. All CSR related offences are compoundable

    The government on Tuesday informed Parliament that it has so far given permission to prosecute in 366 cases related to CSR related offences.

    “So far, sanction for prosecution has been accorded in 366 cases. All CSR related offences are compoundable. So far, 118 applications for compounding have been made and 37 cases have been compounded,” Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs Anurag Singh Thakur said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on December 10.

    Whenever any violation of the CSR provisions is reported, action against such non-compliant companies are initiated as per provisions of Companies Act, 2013 after due examination of records, he added.

    The Minister further said that there was no proposal under consideration to incentivise companies for CSR investment in areas like education and health care.

    He was responding to queries raised by JD(U) member M P Veerendra Kumar who had also asked if the government has constituted a monitoring committee to oversee the CSR spending of the companies.

    The Minister said the CSR is a Board driven process and the Board of the company is empowered to decide the activities to be undertaken as per Schedule VII of the Companies Act, 2013 taking into consideration the recommendation of its CSR committee.

    The entire CSR architecture is disclosure based and CSR mandated companies are required to file details of CSR amount spent annually in MCA21 registry, he added.

  • Education sector receives maximum CSR spend during 2014-18

    Education sector receives maximum CSR spend during 2014-18

    The education sector received the maximum CSR funds to the tune of Rs 15,742.33 crore during financial year 2014-15 to 2017-18, the government informed Parliament on Tuesday. In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on December 10, Union Minister of State for Finance

    The education sector received the maximum CSR funds to the tune of Rs 15,742.33 crore during financial year 2014-15 to 2017-18, the government informed Parliament on Tuesday.

    In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on December 10, Union Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs Anurag Singh Thakur said the CSR spending on education has increased on a year-on-year basis since 2014-15 fiscal.

    The CSR spend stood at Rs 2,589.42 crore during 2014-15 fiscal, which rose to Rs 4,057.45 crore in 2015-16, Rs 4,500.82 in 2016-17, Rs 4,594.64 in 2017-18 and Rs 15,742.33 in 2018-19 financial lyear, he said.

    The Union Minister further said that that CSR is a Board driven process and the Board of the company is empowered to decide the activities to be undertaken as per Schedule VII of the Companies Act, 2013 taking into consideration the recommendation of its CSR committee.

    The entire CSR architecture is a disclosure-based and CSR mandated companies are required to file details of CSR amount spent annually in Ministry of Corporate Affairs registry.

    The Minister also mentioned that the details of project undertaken by the company is not maintained separately by the government.

  • HERE Tech ties up with intl body to pack 3 lakh meals to fight malnutrition

    HERE Tech ties up with intl body to pack 3 lakh meals to fight malnutrition

    HERE Technologies, the global leader in mapping and location platform services, has partnered with an international hunger relief organization ‘Rise Against Hunger India’ for packing 3,00,000 meals for the undernourished and less fortunate. The partnership has also led to the development

    HERE Technologies, the global leader in mapping and location platform services, has partnered with an international hunger relief organization ‘Rise Against Hunger India’ for packing 3,00,000 meals for the undernourished and less fortunate.

    The partnership has also led to the development of a hunger map and tracking system that will enhance the organization’s evaluation process and monitoring of meal distribution to its partners, the company said in a statement.

    Part of the company’s Social Innovation efforts, the project was launched mid of 2019 and results will be launched in the new year.

    Commenting on the initiative, HERE Technologies Vice President (Global Content Operatons) Damandeep Kochhar said as per UNICEF’s 2019 report, malnutrition caused 69 per cent of deaths of children below the age of five in India.

    The unavailability of quality nutrition is one of the biggest life threats to a major chunk of India’s population, he said, and added that the ‘Rise Against Hunger’ is known for its continual commitment to eliminate hunger and they have taken commendable steps in providing wholesome meals to people in need.

    “This year, not only did we pack 3,00,000 meal packets within two hours, but we also achieved another key milestone – packing the millionth packet globally,” he said.

    In the days to come, the meal packets will be distributed to multiple beneficiaries across Maharashtra including children, HIV-positive individuals, women, patients of tuberculosis, and the elderly.

    Undernutrition is one of the key issues plaguing India today. In a country where 60 per cent of the population earns less than USD 3 a day, it is not surprising that according to Food and Agriculture Organization, around 195 million people go hungry daily in India with 1 in 4 children being malnourished.

    As part of its CSR tenet, HERE Technologies strongly believes in giving back to the society and providing less fortunate communities with necessary resources and welfare measures to help them grow and flourish.

    Rise Against Hunger India Executive Director Dola Mohapatra said, “With partners like HERE, every year we come even closer to our vision of eradicating hunger by 2030.”

  • RB aims to bring awareness around sexual wellbeing among different communities

    RB aims to bring awareness around sexual wellbeing among different communities

    RB, a consumer Health and Hygiene Company, under its flagship Dettol Banega Swasth India aims at bringing awareness around sexual wellbeing among children and the LGBTQ community with two collaboration programs. The collaboration with ADRA, Love Matters and Itv foundation, is aimed at introducing

    RB, a consumer Health and Hygiene Company, under its flagship Dettol Banega Swasth India aims at bringing awareness around sexual wellbeing among children and the LGBTQ community with two collaboration programs.

    The collaboration with ADRA, Love Matters and Itv foundation, is aimed at introducing a comprehensive sexual health curriculum for children. The program will reach out to 20,000,000 children above the age group of 10 years across 10,000 schools in seven North Eastern States of India.

    The goal of this project is to provide lifesaving, critical information on SRHR (Sexual and Reproductive Health & Rights) that empowers adolescents, promotes healthy behaviour, encourages community engagement and inclusion, and helps adolescents develop into healthy, responsible adults.

    Banega Swasth LGBTQ India program in partnership with The Humsafar Trust aims at impacting lives of more than 1 million LGBTQ people in India. The holistic program will strengthen and bring together an Integrated Network for Sexual Minorities (INFOSEM).

    The program will work in partnership to ensure inclusion and mainstreaming of the LGBTQ community in India through strengthening community network and capacity development of the community-based organization (CBOs).

    The project will provide capacity-building workshops, training and funding support to conduct activities in their region. To support this project, a range of Durex condoms, lubricants will be provided with a message of safe sex among younger LGBTQ communities.

    According to the Department of AIDS Control, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, HIV and AIDS prevalence rates in Manipur and Nagaland are 1.57 and 1.2 per cent respectively and well above the national average of 0.34 per cent. Despite the North Eastern region being less populated, there are close to 100,000 people who live with HIV and AIDS in the eight northeastern states in comparison to other states in India.

    The factors responsible for the epidemic are complex and can be contrasting for different regions, restricting the use of a single approach for HIV control nationally. Therefore, continuous monitoring for prevalence and causes of disease at the district level is necessary for making control programs more effective.

    Addressing the issue, a group of thought-leading organizations, including RB, ADRA, Love Matters and Itv foundation, have come together and designed a comprehensive curriculum aimed at improving knowledge, awareness and behaviour among children:

  • Vedanta conducts week-long observance of World AIDS Day in Jharsuguda

    Vedanta conducts week-long observance of World AIDS Day in Jharsuguda

    Vedanta Ltd, Jharsuguda conducted a weeklong campaign to spread awareness on HIV/AIDS, reaching out to nearly 8000 people including employees, partner organizations, truckers, students, community and Jharsuguda citizenry. Various activities and interventions like IEC material distribution

    Vedanta Ltd, Jharsuguda conducted a weeklong campaign to spread awareness on HIV/AIDS, reaching out to nearly 8000 people including employees, partner organizations, truckers, students, community and Jharsuguda citizenry.

    Various activities and interventions like IEC material distribution, awareness sessions, street plays, etc. were conducted as a part of the campaign in collaboration with OSACS and Wockhardt Foundation, depicting this year’s theme ‘Ending the HIV/AIDS Epidemic, Community by Community’ as initiated by OSACS.

    The campaign started on World Aids Day with a showcase of solidarity as employee volunteers led by the CSR team distributed red ribbons and informative materials at the plant premises, to create awareness amongst all employees, partner companies and everyone associated with our operations. Post that, the campaign spread outwards to include community members, college students, and truckers and mobile workforce and residents of nearly 24 villages of Jharsuguda.

    Over the week, various activities and awareness sessions were conducted at the Jharsuguda Women’s College, LN College, Black Diamond Engineering College and Reserve Police Lane. The awareness sessions were conducted under the expertise of OSACS by resource personnel Shiva Prasad Ojha and Prashant Patra.

    “Our CSR department partnered the Mirror Theatre Group for spreading awareness on HIV/AIDS prevention through street plays at multiple locations inside the plant premises, Bhurkamunda village, Sarbahal, etc. addressing truckers, migrant workforce and community members in the process.”, the company said.

    Speaking on the company’s CSR efforts CN Singh, CEO – Vedanta Ltd., Jharsuguda said, “We are the first organization in the state to roll out an Employer Led Model of HIV/AIDS awareness & prevention project – Jagruti in partnership with OSACS, which was greatly appreciated by NACO as well. As a company, we are committed to delivering sustainable and responsible growth, transforming the lives of communities around us for the better. We are driven by a safety-first culture, with focus on prevention first and our CSR efforts are aligned to the same.”

    Ashwini Kumar Mohanty, Superitendent of Police – Jharsuguda, thanked Vedanta Ltd., Jharsuguda and OSACS for organizing the awareness session, initiating an open dialogue on the topic of HIV/AIDS and addressing the queries and concerns of participants.

    “Health & sanitation is an important dimension of Vedanta Ltd., Jharsuguda’s CSR outreach. Our CSR dept. has sensitized nearly 30,000 people including employees, partner organizations, truckers, community members, students and vulnerable mass through efforts in HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention in the last three years alone, and sustained efforts are underway to reach out to and educate more people in the days to come.”, the Company informed.

  • Barco helps kids meet with God on Children’s day

    Barco helps kids meet with God on Children’s day

    Barco Electronic Systems celebrated a vibrant Children’s Day at the Swaminarayan Akshardham temple in New Delhi by hosting a day-out for 30 children aged 6-12 years from Sakshi NGO. Celebrated across the country, Children’s Day is an occasion to increase awareness of the rights, care and education

    Barco Electronic Systems celebrated a vibrant Children’s Day at the Swaminarayan Akshardham temple in New Delhi by hosting a day-out for 30 children aged 6-12 years from Sakshi NGO.

    Celebrated across the country, Children’s Day is an occasion to increase awareness of the rights, care and education of children.

    The children received a guided tour of the temple and enjoyed interactive exhibitions during the visit, the company said in a statement.

    During their three-hour visit, the children enjoyed the shows at Sahajanand Darshan – Hall of Values; Neelkanth Darshan – Large Format Film aired on Barco’s latest installation at Akshardham, the XDL 60K true RGB laser projector and Sanskruti Darshan – Cultural Boat Ride.

    The fourth major attraction at Akshardham, the Sahaj Anand multi-media water show is also powered by Barco, through the UDX 30K laser phosphor projector.

    Commenting on the occasion, Electronics Systems Managing Director Rajiv Bhalla said this initiative not only supports the company’s CSR efforts but also reinforces the Barco’s cultural building block ‘we care, we grow’.

  • Industry leaders pitch for social change through ‘Design Thinking’

    Industry leaders pitch for social change through ‘Design Thinking’

    Industry leaders today stressed on the need for integration of ‘design thinking’ and ‘inclusive growth’ into the CSR practice and called for corporate social innovation and strategic partnerships as a key to achieving sustainable growth. Speaking at the Brand Leadership and CSR summit event

    Industry leaders today stressed on the need for integration of ‘design thinking’ and ‘inclusive growth’ into the CSR practice and called for corporate social innovation and strategic partnerships as a key to achieving sustainable growth.

    Speaking at the Brand Leadership and CSR summit event in New Delhi, Aishwarya Mahajan of Aid-et Action International (AAI)– an NGO working on education — said: “The success of a social sector intervention is based on the benefit to its end-user community and the development of such interventions cannot be done in isolation.”

    As a matter of fact, the process of project development needs to embody the concept of the human connect which taps capacities hitherto overlooked by conventional problem-solving approaches, he said.

    He also said that incorporating ‘Design Thinking’ to solving a problem is a participatory solution and a key driver for social change in India.

    At AAI, two major initiatives namely ‘Initiative for livelihood Education (ILEAD)’ and ‘My Gakidh Village’ in Bhutan are inherently optimistic, constructive, and experiential in addressing the needs of the people.

    Also, these programmes have evolved in the years when the term ‘Design Thinking’ was not even coined and there was little awareness regarding it,” he added.

    Asserting that the role of CSR is crucial in nation-building, Brand India Founder Nidhi Robbins Simon said it is important for filling crucial gaps in empowering women, children and senior citizens.

    “With development taking place at an unprecedented rate, it remains imperative that the former is planned for, and enacted, sustainably in a way that acknowledges our collective role as caretakers of our environment, economy and society for future generations,” he added.

    The summit provided an opportunity for all CSR stakeholders to converge on a common platform and share their valuable insights on how organizations are using CSR to integrate economic, environmental and social objectives with their operations and growth.

    Over 12 organizations were felicitated at the summit for achieving excellence in CSR. The event was supported by Power grid with Karunya University as the knowledge partner and PR Professionals as a PR partner

  • Canon India ties up with Cinepolis to mark Children’s Day

    Canon India ties up with Cinepolis to mark Children’s Day

    To mark the Children’s Day, Canon India in partnership with Cinepolis Group organised a special screening of a 3D movie ‘The Lion King’ on November 14 for children of all the four adopted villages in Haryana, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Karnataka. The movie was screened in four adopted villages

    To mark the Children’s Day, Canon India in partnership with Cinepolis Group organised a special screening of a 3D movie ‘The Lion King’ on November 14 for children of all the four adopted villages in Haryana, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

    The movie was screened in four adopted villages — Maheshwari in Haryana, Sol Gohalia in Kolkata, Karanjoti in Mumbai and Maharaja Katte in Bangalore — as part of its CSR initiative ‘Learning Beyond Books’ which aims to offer experiential learning beyond homes and school boundaries.

    The Lion King, a movie symbolic of wisdom, courage and compassion, is packed with unforgettable life lessons, extremely crucial for the children to learn to succeed in their future endeavours.

    Speaking on the occasion, Canon India President and CEO Kazutada Kobayashi said: “At Canon, we strongly believe in leading by our corporate philosophy of ‘Kyosei’, through which we align our business objectives with our sustainability initiatives.”

    He said education and empowerment form two intrinsic pillars of its “4Es CSR policy” and with children as the building blocks of any society, the aim is to implement maximum efforts to ensure their holistic development.

    ‘Learning Beyond Books’ is one such initiative through which the company intends to empower children from our adopted villages, to carve a brighter and better tomorrow, he added.

    Cinepolis India Deputy CEO Devang Sampat said, “We believe that cinema is one such alternate way that has the power to influence and empower the masses. It gave us immense pleasure to join hands with Canon India.”

    Canon’s CSR endeavours are driven by their corporate philosophy of ‘Kyosei’, which mean the ‘spirit of living and working together for the common good’.

    The company is involved in various community welfare programs aligned with their 4Es CSR policy implying Education, Eye Care, Environment and Empowerment, in an effort to build progressive self-reliant communities.

    Through their flagship ‘Adopt a Village’ project, Canon has four adopted villages across the country, focusing on the overall development of the village communities with a major focus on 4Es.