CB BureauMuch like in the last year, the term ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) continues to be underlined in media communications from corporate groups. An interesting development this year is that corporate leaders who generally talk about growth numbers and product features are now attempting to bring the spotlight on to their CSR”and gain brownie points among stakeholders. With new CSR laws in place, ‘business’ leaders are now talking to niche mediums about their ‘social’ side, the idea being to announce that the two per cent of their net profits is being invested well.
One such announcement was made by Nokia Networks last month. The company chose Save the Children as their CSR implementation partner for a project focused at disaster preparedness of children – and by extension, of the communities they live in – at the grassroots. While the role of Save the Children – or its modus operandi to engage with children – will remain the same (probably also the beneficiaries, since the NGO has been active in several states for decades) as it is for its other programmes, the content of the programme here is focused at preparing children for not just natural calamities but also everyday vulnerabilities – crossing railway lines and roads, threats from electricity poles, or even hygiene matters.
As any commercial business would do, Nokia Networks has plugged in their ‘exclusive’ technology with the project. The company has developed a sort of package called Network-in-a-Box that it claims will keep mobile connectivity ‘up’ in case of a natural calamity, when operator networks fail and the hardware goes down. No, Nokia did not reveal much details about the box – its range, cost, technology used, energy needed, or radiations, if any.
Here are a few abstracts from the conversation that Team CauseBecause had with Sandeep Girotra, vice president and head of India, Nokia Networks, and Thomas Chandy, chief executive officer, Save the Children, India.
On partnership
CauseBecause (CB) to Chandy: How did Save the Children conceptualize this project and approach Nokia for support?
Chandy: Such projects take a lot of time in conceptualization. Sometimes it takes a couple of years.In many cases we identify what the problem is and then begin a conversation with potential partners or donors to jointly find a solution for the same… This project saw a lot of deliberations among our teams first and was followed by about six months of discussions with decision makers at Nokia. Save the Children was consistently sharing ideas with the company on how they could help solve a few fundamental problems if they integrated their technology with the work that we were doing at the grassroots.
The objective of the partnership is to build resilience of children and all vulnerable communities in vulnerable regions of the country. Some of the technological innovations that we will adopt will really help in building the resilience of those communities… The focus areas of the project are 350 vulnerable villages in five states. Yes, looking at the size of the country this is a miniscule intervention. We can look at it as another pilot project that can be scaled up. As Nokia’s philosophy says, ‘to influence the future, you have to invest in it now.’ This partnership and this project is a step towards that investment.
CB to Girotra: Why Save the Children? And why disaster management specifically? What was developed first, the CSR programme or the Network-in-a-Box device?
Girotra: In the overall value system of Nokia, ‘sustainability’ and ‘respect’ are two things that we are passionate about, and CSR gives us the vehicle to put that in practice. Having Save the Children as a partner will not only make our CSR practices a lot more formal and structured, but also ensure scope for scalability while creating more opportunities for our people to be engaged in, deliver and see the impact.
We are running a similar programme with Save the Children in Myanmar. In India we have added the technology dimension to the programme. The idea is to bring in the technology in some of the processes that Save the Children has been engaged in for several decades now.
On timelines and budgets
CB: By when are you targeting to complete the project, and how much of Nokia’s CSR spends is being invested in the same?
Chandy: The project timeline is three years and we will be able to cover the said 350 villages within this timeframe. Girotra: We have not come up with the budget figures, but let me answer this question this way: we will pick up two or three initiatives and one of them is what we are talking about here today. If you look at the larger picture, with the government of India driving initiatives like Digital India and Skill India, we will shortly be able to talk more about our plans.
CB: Have you identified implementation partners for those planned projects?
Girotra: As of now we have only joined hands with Save the Children and will soon start identifying partners for the future initiatives that are on the cards.
On impact
CB: If a layman wants to understand what the impact of this project will be, or what difference it will make to communities in the targeted 350 villages, how will you explain?
(The gentleman heading the project in the field took over to answer and nicely explained the ‘design’ and acronyms that underpinned the programme, and the parameters on which the project will be measured. For the layman, though, the explanation remained quite confusing.)
Ray Kancharia, national humanitarian DRR manager, Save the Children: We have five pillars of action whenever we do programmes that integrate resilience. Our mantra is PREMA – an acronym for preparedness, resilience, early warning, mitigation and adaptation. The design has something called HELP, which stands for health, education, livelihoods and protection. These are the areas that we will measure our impact on. To begin with, we will look at children’s participation with us, their engagement with our task forces, in charting the risk maps. We are looking at grown-ups’ engagement too – they become a part of village-level committees that do risk management and risk planning and execute adaptation actions. We will also try to link up with the panchayat-level risk-management agenda…
Team CauseBecause’s planned action
CauseBecause is in the process of formulating impact-assessment teams who will go to the grassroots and engage with the beneficiaries of CSR projects of various corporate groups. The teams will meet communities, understand the impact of various interventions, and share their stories with stakeholders, including development professionals, CSR professionals, governments and concerned citizens – which is all of us.