Ahmedabad – VisionSpring is organising the seventh edition of its ‘Reinventing CSR’ symposium on 12 Jul in Ahmedabad. The event will host leaders and experts to talk about ways to effect a large-scale social impact of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

The theme of the symposium is ‘The problems are too big to solve alone’.

The event will talk about creation of programmes to leverage resources, manage pooled investments, and create performance based mechanisms to track the CSR programs.

For deeper and meaningful impact, organizations are seeking to focus on long-term initiatives. An interest in potential collective action is also emerging as a key trend.

The event is likely to be attended by G.P. Brahmabhutt, Director at National Rural Livelihood Mission, Urvashi Prasad, Policy specialist at NITI Aayog and VisionSpring President Ella Gudwin, among other leaders from NGOs and Development sector.

The CSR investments in India, is likely to exceed Rs 50,000 crore by the end of the financial year 2019-18 (Apr-Mar).

The Companies Act 2013 prescribes 17 areas of CSR activity in Schedule VII of the act. Section 135 of the Act lays down rules for CSR activity in India. The companies are required to spend at least 2% of the amount of the net profit for the last 3 financial years.

The policy which became effective from 1 April, 2014, mandates those companies for CSR activity which have net worth of 5 billion rupees or more; or turnover of 10 billion rupees or more; or net profit of 50 million rupees or more during any financial year.

VisionSpring is a global social enterprise creating access to affordable eye wear. It has distributed over five million pairs of correcting eye glasses wort $1.2 billion. In India, the company has distributed close to 3 million pairs.