On Our Business of Corporate Social Responsibility

8 NOV, 2019

After a month of philanthropy and conscious giving, we are ready to reflect on The Joy of Giving Week. For those new to the concept, The Joy of Giving Week or Daan Utsav, which runs from 2-8 October every year, was a movement initiated in 2009, with an intention of providing a platform to everyone who wanted to make a difference in fellow citizens’ lives. India’s philanthropic festival has come a long way since then. And so, has our internal CSR arm, Prayas since its inception in 2011. 2018-2019 has seen Prayas effectively align its efforts to one of Tavisca’s key CSR objectives, ‘Support organizations working towards making a positive difference in society.’ Over the last two years, we have extended our assistance to a plethora of causes whose purpose has been to better communities and the lives of its individuals. We have actively supported and assisted

• Motopaws and RESQ, organizations working towards the rehabilitation and rescue of stray animals
• The Robin Hood Army, a volunteer-based organization working to collect surplus food from eateries and communities for the less fortunate
• The Poona School and Home for Blind, whose mission is to train the blind for self-employment and rehabilitation
• The Apprentice Project, an immersive mentorship program working towards empowering low-income children with opportunities and life skills;

We partnered with The Apprentice project and visited the Pune Municipal School to motivate young girls to pursue technology as a career choice. As a result, 25 girls who participated in the workshop, signed up to take up coding as a subject this year

Through an exhaustive 2-day volunteer induction program at our office premises, Tavisca’s internal team of volunteers were trained on how to deliver curriculums in schools. They were also imparted with the skills and knowledge required for effective classroom management

• The Kerala Relief Fund, an emergency assistance scheme that grants relief to those affected by natural calamities. Donation drives were organized by Prayas, to collect medicines, clothing and food items for families and individuals affected by the floods in Kerala. Additionally, we made a financial donation to The Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund to better support the victims of this natural disaster
• Bharat Ke Veer Corpus Fund, a fundraising initiative that assists families of martyrs. As a mark of gratitude and respect towards soldiers who passed on in the line of duty, a financial donation was made from our CSR Fund to the Bharat Ke Veer Corpus Fund
• The Little Hands School, an institution that provides subsidized education to children from economically challenged backgrounds. Along with donating classroom supplies and educational kits, we also conducted social audits in economically challenged neighbourhoods to:
  1. Identify children between the ages of 3-6 who are not in school
  2. Determine the assistance required to enrol these students in schools
  3. Identify educated unemployed women from an impoverished community and encourage them to enrol in a teacher training program. The objective is to empower them with the skills they need in order to pursue dignified livelihoods
• The Daan Utsav week over the last 2 years, by contributing clothes, medicine and educational aids to our two NGO partners
• Keeping in mind our responsibilities towards the environment, our administration team ensures that we use natural processes for facility maintenance instead of harmful chemicals, whenever and wherever possible.

Our CSR pipeline in 2020 looks promising too:

• Our leadership team will visit the SVT school to deliver career counselling and motivational sessions
• A hackathon event is in the offing. The objective is to provide a platform for the children from the Pune Municipal Corporation to demonstrate their coding skills. Our goal is then to supplement that experience for them with skill-enhancement modules
• This quarter also sees us conducting a dance workshop and helping the administration team at Little Hands School set up a computer lab. Towards this objective, we have already donated computers and financial aids.

Summing it all up, Prayas has done a commendable job this year and in the last.  And to ensure we continue to be on the right track and support organizations making a positive impact in the society, our CSR arm is constantly trying to answer:

How and what more can we do to better our CSR reach and impact?

As an institution, we are today at a coveted juncture with an excellent set of people practices, work processes and modern technologies. From a CSR standpoint, our objective then is simple and straightforward. The aspiration is to leverage our collective capabilities to equip organizations with the resources they require to create a sustainable difference to society. More so, in the areas of child education and women empowerment. It is our belief that building a successful business and building a better society are no longer incongruent goals. They are both essential to our organizational development and people growth.  And we would like to do both. And do both equally well.

About the Author: Nothing much really. Kavitha is an aspiring writer, a true blue dreamer, a control freak and then there is that bit in her, that people refer to as ‘Pollyanna’.