RBL Bank enabled repurposing of CSR program managed by the NGO, Natarajan Education Society (NES). NES trains women on tailoring and fashion designing to help them set up small business and self-help groups. The Bank gave an opportunity to the women to manufacture three ply cloth mask, as part of the obligation for safety of its front line workers, business correspondents and branch staff and customers.
The women beneficiaries and NES in a short duration transited from class room training to completely virtual environment in order to learn making high quality masks. With a short duration of over two months, these women beneficiaries manufactured 60,000 masks distributed across the four zones in India.
RBL Bank has also partnered with the West Bengal State Rural Livelihood Mission (WBSRLM) managed women SHG – Anandadhara. They manufactured 10,000 masks which were distributed locally in the East and North East part of the country.
RBL Bank has been supporting the schools under the Udbhav School initiatives since 2016 and adopted a new school in 2019, the first in the slum community of Fatehnagar, Hyderabad. The school serves the children of the low income families with high quality education and nutritional support for their well-rounded development. Ever since Covid-19 lockdown, the schools and learning centers are shut with no clarity on when they would re-open.
RBL Bank donated laptops and tablets to bring the school at-home as the learning solutions making it completely free for the school. With the help of these laptops & tablets, the students can learn and practice from the comfort of their homes. Teachers and other stakeholders can use real-time dashboards to monitor the student progress and take appropriate actions in the virtual classrooms. RBL Bank’s long term vision is to enable these children break the cycle of poverty through the access of excellent education, thereby making them propellers and change agents for the sustenance of the schools and the communities they represent.
Shanta Vallury Gandhi, Head HR, CSR & Internal Branding, RBL Bank said, “RBL Bank aims to help the low income groups and with such initiatives they right help in empowering them to lead a better life. Over all these years, through the Bank’s support around 1500 children are getting the direct benefits, with over 50% girls getting educated maintain a healthy ratio”. Ms. Gandhi further added, “The women beneficiaries gain meaningful work and provided the much needed economic support that helped hike their overall family’s income, especially during the lockdown phase of COVID-19”.
In 2019, the 6th edition of RBL Bank’s ‘UMEED 1000’ Cyclothon was organized from Udaipur to Amritsar en-route RBL Bank branches to raise awareness on importance of girl child education. More than 40 employees of RBL Bank did cycling for 1000 kilometers, including 6 women employees who cycled for 100 kilometers to support the cause and raised 5.10 crore. The Bank intends to take its learning from here and set-up another school in the coming year. RBL Bank continues to monitor the situation and how it might affect the future of learning. The Bank along with the Udbhav School team is working rigorously to build a blended model of learning to stay ahead of the curve.
