By Rusen Kumar
BHOPAL: Indian Institute of Forest Management’s (IIFM) Communication Cell hosted the third Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Conclave 2012 at IIFM, Bhopal today with the theme “Millenium Development Goals – a strong driver in CSR plans of contemporary India’s business circle”.
The summit, attended by over 8 delegates, 20 faculty, and 120 students from India and abroad, was inaugurated by Rekha Singhal, Acting Director, IIFM.
This year CSR conclave discussed millennium development goals for India including eradication of poverty and hunger, achieving universal education, gender and women equality, health among others.
The objectives were to discuss the progress and development in the CSR arena in India, provide guidance and address challenges and opportunities in the implementation of CSR with regard to the necessity of monitoring and evaluation of CSR initiative and share experiences and different stakeholders in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in India.
It also shed light on region for low performance on the MDG Indicators and be a platform to learn and share with professional and experts from different sphere on development sector.
Brig. Rajiv Williams, Corporate Head-CSR, Jindal Stainless Ltd, talked about MDGs ‘Women empowerment and Gender Equality’. He focused on the improvement of quality of people especially women rather than poverty and charity by imparting some basic and advanced skills.
Mr. Suresh Pramar, Executive Director, Centre for training and research in Responsible Business, discussed the current status of CSR and its future perspectives. He co-related CSR with Gandhian thoughts and later included Personal Responsibility with CSR. Various points related to poverty in terms of its nature, dimension and manifestation were discussed by Mr. Kalyan S. Bose, Vice President & Head Corporate communications, Indian Commodity Exchange Ltd.
Mr. Martyn Smith, Prog. Director, Marie Stopes India, enlightened the audience on maternity health and business based on community and community based on women. Ms. Bhasha Singh discussed on Education (MDG-2) “CSR activity majorly focuses on Sustainable Development and not on charity”.
Mr. Ganga C. Sharma, Country Head-CSR & Sustainability Services, TUVRheinland India talked about environment sustainability and gave wider aspect of environmental issues and how is impacting the business goals. He said that environment sustainability is very much essential for business sustainability.
Maneesha Chadha, Head of Corporate Citizenship, South Asia, Citi Bank shared about best CSR practices of Citi Bank in India. She highlighted the important of corporate citizenship for the achieving financial inclusion.
Bhasha Singh, Dy Manager, Essar Investment Ltd shared Essar Group CSR best practices. She said that CSR is good for business and society. Displacement through industrialization is creating new problems in society. She shared that education can play bigger role in making the society prosperous.
The event “Social Innovative Idea Competition” was judged by Mr. Yasir Ahmed, Associate Director, KPMG and Ms. Payal Mulchandani, Co-founder of 4th wheel CSR Consultancy where 4 groups from various management institutes like IITM, IRMA, MANAGE and Great Lakes participated. The other event organised for the occasion was Change Photography competition with an entry of more than 250 on facebook.
Rusen Kumar, Director, IndiaCSR (www.indiacsr.in), the largest CSR network in India participated and represent the company. IndiaCSR was event promoter of the Mega CSR Conclave.
Kapil Patil, convener of the conclave presented vote of thanks.
IIFM is a premier Management Institute constantly endeavours to evolve knowledge useful for managers in the area of environment, development and community and livelihood management. It disseminates such knowledge in ways that promotes its application by individual and organisation. Communication cell is a student body working as a bridge between the outside world and IIFM.
