Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility is defined as operating a business that meets or exceeds the
ethical, legal, commercial and public expectations that society has of business. 

Corporate Social Responsibility is one such niche area of Corporate Behaviour and Governance
that needs to get aggressively addressed and implemented tactfully in the organizations. At the
same time CSR is one such effective tool that synergizes the efforts of Corporate and the social
sector agencies towards sustainable growth and development of societal objectives at large. 
India is a fast growing economy and is booming with national and multinational firms. At the
same time, the Indian land also faces social challenges like poverty, population growth,
corruption, illiteracy just to name a few. Therefore it is all the more imperative for the Indian
companies to be sensitized to CSR in the right perspective in order to facilitate and create an
enabling environment for equitable partnership bettheyen the civil society and business. 

CSR policy functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business monitors and
ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards, and international
norms. The goal of CSR is to embrace responsibility for the company's actions and encourage a
positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities,
stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere.

Furthermore, CSR-focused businesses would proactively promote the public interest by

encouraging community growth and development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that
harm the public sphere, regardless of legality. CSR is the deliberate inclusion of public interest
into corporate decision-making, that is the core business of the company or firm, and the
honoring of a triple bottom line: people, planet, profit.

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 Wipro’s Corporate Social Responsibility

Wipro’s commitment has never been limited to the IT initiatives they execute
in their daily functions. Over the years, they have developed a clear road to
realize our vision of taking their success to other sections of society who
struggle to care for their basic needs.

Wipro Cares:

Wipro Cares is an initiative by the Wiproites, their family members and

friends to contribute in the areas of education, community and social
development. Wipro Cares philosophy is to utilize the collective wisdom of
volunteers to bring long term benefits and satisfaction to the community, as
they believe that providing funds alone will not help the community. This is a
unique corporate experiment to channelize the contributions of the Wiproites matched by
Wipro, and the desires of Wiproites to make meaningful contributions to society, on a
continuous basis.

Wipro Cares contributes through two pronged strategy: providing rehabilitation to survivors of
natural calamities and enhancing learning abilities of children from the under privileged
sections of the society

Leaning enhancement

Wipro Cares has initiated Learning Enhancement Programmes at schools catering to the
children from the under privileged section of the society. The main objectives of this
programme is to improve the standards of learning, build confidence, ignite curiosity, broaden
their awareness levels, improve their communication skills in English, build a healthy self-
esteem and help them break through self imposed limits to achieve his/her greatest
potential.In line with its focus, these programmes have been successfully implemented in Olcott
Memorial School in Besant nagar, Chennai and Government Secondary School in Viveknagar,
Bangalore.

The Olcott Memorial School in Besantnagar, Chennai is a 110 years old Tamil medium school
run by the theological Society. Wipro Cares volunteers work with the students of classes 4 and
5 (total strength -120 children), for about two hours on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of every
month. The Government Secondary School in Viveknagar, Bangalore in run in three different
languages-Tamil, Telegu and Kannada.Volunteers who are comfortable in communicating in
one of these languages take up the responsibility of each class where they devote 2 hours every
Saturday. The volunteers work with children from class 2 onwards.As they go along, they plan
to roll this programme in several more schools and in other cities.

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Wipro Cares volunteers devote 2 hours every Saturday with the ultimate desire to make
learning fun for these children. Once the volunteer builds a good rapport with a group of three-
four children, he or she would work on the holistic development of these children - to instill
confidence among them, to build communication skills, encourage their creativity and thinking
ability.

Makkala Jagriti

Wipro Cares Learning Centre:A Learning Center focused on providing enriching, exciting, safe
and secure environment to children from under privileged sections of the society was
inaugurated by Makkala Jagriti, and Wipro Cares in Bangalore. Makkala Jagriti is an NGO, whose
focus is to work with underprivileged children in the area of education. The Learning Centre will
also provide opportunities for contributing to the community to Wipro employees, their friends
and families. They can get involved by interacting, involving, teaching & learning in mutually
enriching way to reach quality-learning environment to the economically disadvantaged
children in an integrated manner through the Learning Centre..

Summer Camp for Children:

The idea of interacting with the children of the school using

creative and innovative ways such as arts, crafts and other fun
activities appealed to the Wipro Cares volunteers. It had two fold
objectives: First, to stay in touch with the children that they
theyre involved with during the summer break. Second, to make
the summer holidays enjoyable for these children, who would
otherwise have to spend time playing with mud and sand outside
their homes, when their parents go to work. The activities also
brought forth the hidden talents of these children (and the volunteers!) be it story telling with
hand puppets, painting or clay modeling.

A group of volunteers took on the additional responsibility of organizing the camp, with the
support of the administration. They planned out different activities every Saturday.The summer
camps also helped these children develop their skills, confidence and motivation to succeed not
just in classrooms but in life.

Providing Basic Infrastructure at the School

For a child to come regularly to the school and stay interested in school activities, it is necessary
hat the school is equipped with proper infrastructure. Moreover, research has shown that lack
of toilets facilities for girls is the main reason for the high drop out rates among students.In the
Government School in Veveknagar, Bangalore-India, Wipro Cares has constructed toilet blocks
to cater to e student population. Along with that, they have provided a gate, which will ensure

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that the kids will not run out of the school to the roads, which may be dangerous. Small but
thoughtful contributions from Wipro Cares.

Disaster

Wipro Cares has adopted Pushpavanam village in tsunami-ravaged belt of Tamil Nadu with a
desire to rehabilitate survivors and rebuild the village. Our partner in this effort is BITsunami, a
trust formed by the alumni of BITS, Pilani.

Pushpavanam, about an hour's drive from Nagapattinam, has around 1200 house holds with a
population of about 6000. It lost 19 people to the tsunami which washed away 200 houses; 500
families lost their livelihood and another 250 families theyre affected indirectly; 35 boats
supporting around 200 families, an important means of livelihood theyre lost or damaged and
almost all cultivable land (about 100 acres) was left barren, leaving both cultivators and the
agricultural labourers without a means of livelihood.

What they did earlier in Orissa and Gujarat

The damage caused by these calamities was huge; thousands of lives theyre lost, lakhs
rendered homeless, land owners suffered incalculable losses. The calamity affected people had
to begin from scratch.

Wipro Cares' contribution in both these states, which theyre hit by two calamities of hither-to-
unseen dimensions, (Cyclone in Orissa in 1999 and earthquake in Gujarat in 2001) is
unique.After mobilizing funds from Wiproites which was matched by Wipro, Wipro Cares set up
a team to evaluate the damage during both these calamities. Our rehabilitation work was done
after detailed discussions with the survivors and analyzing their needs.

Build eco-system

Support new entrants (both individuals and organizations) into education reform. The Wipro
Education Fellowship provides a platform for individuals to engage in projects in education
reform. This is an 18-month long engagement as part of which individuals work on specific
assignments with our partner organizations in documentation, research or work on the ground.
Along with this they go through various workshops and courses provided by some of our
partner organizations that help them get a theoretical grounding in education and an
understanding of the work happening across the country. Over the past 3 years they have on

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boarded 10 Fellows in this effort. They support new organizations working in education reform.
The support is not only financial. They work with them along with their senior partner
organizations and provide support in building capabilities, participation from senior
educationists on the ground in work with their organization and mentoring framework available
to us through they wide network of partners across the country. They have worked with 7 new
organizations in this manner in the past 8 years. They sponsor individuals on some
courses/workshops in education conducted by some of our partner organizations.

Experiment and Learn

 They support holistic and deep engagements with schools to catalyze a change in school
culture. This covers teaching-learning processes, assessment frameworks, school-parent
engagement, curriculum reform, teaching-learning material improvement and
administrative and management processes. The thought is to encourage the school to
relook at all aspects of the school and help revamp the collective culture taking it towards
being more democratic and inclusive. They have worked with 13 partner organizations in
such holistic efforts.

 They support incisive experiments in specific areas like teacher trainings, school leader
training, specific subject learning, action research, assessment etc to go deep into one area,
understand it better and share it with a large audience of schools and educators. Our
efforts in curricular research, developing learning standards for subjects, assessment for
conceptual learning are examples of such efforts. These experiments are seen as inroads
into the engagements with school holistically so these projects lead to holistic
engagements with schools. They have worked with over 10 organizations in similar efforts.

 Through our projects they have engaged with more than 1000 schools, 10,000
educators and 30 social organizations across 17 states in the country.

Volunteering

A sabbatical policy encourages Infoscions to work for designated Indian Non-Governmental

Organizations (NGOs) on community projects. Employees are paid an allowance by the
company for up to a year.

Infoscions actively support the mid-day meal program of the Akshaya Patra Foundation. It is the
world’s largest NGO school meal program blending nutrition with education for more than one
million children in rural areas across seven states in India, daily.

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Emergency aid

In 2009, floods in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka caused widespread destruction of life and
property. The Wipro Foundation and Infoscions donated 30 crore towards rehabilitation and
reconstruction of homes. In 2010, Wipro Australia organized a fund-raiser to support Red Cross’
disaster relief efforts in the wake of earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. Wipro USA worked with Red
Cross to provide Haitians with food and medical care.

Digital empowerment

Wipro initiates children into Information Technology at a young age through the SPARK
program. In 2009-10, Infoscions touched the lives of more than 70,000 students across India by
undertaking IT training and mentoring teachers of government-aided schools in rural areas.

Shaping policies

Members of the board of directors of Wipro serve on global councils and contribute to policy
making in corporate governance, education, healthcare, diversity, and the environment.

Wipro is partnering with state utilities in India to introduce 'voluntary green tariff', enabling
consumers to offset the cost of renewable energy. We hosted the Climate Roadmap Sub-
National Workshop at Mysore, a platform to share best practices in environment sustainability.

Promoting education and research

Wipro is working with more than 400 engineering colleges in India to enhance their curriculum
and enrich the talent pool through the Campus Connect program. The Wipro Science
Foundation promotes research in pure and applied sciences with an annual prize of 50 lakh for
Indian researchers.

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 Smile Foundation

Smile Foundation was formed in 2002 by a group of corporate

professionals who, decided to finance, handhold and support
genuine grassroots' initiatives targeted at providing education
and health to underprivileged children. In the process,
becoming the first ever grant maker and changing the face of
thousands of lives.

Smile Foundation is a national level development organization

reaching out to more than 2 Lakh underprivileged children
through various education and health care projects across 22
states of India.

Smile follows the model of Social Venture Philanthropy, an idea successful in the business world
as venture capitalism. A smile identifies handholds and builds capacities of genuine grassroots
NGOs to achieve scalability and sustainability with a deep sense of accountability among the
non-profits. Smile promotes and encourages good governance to achieve credibility and
accountability in the development sector. Smile endorses Credibility Alliances norms.

Smile Foundation strives to promote and catalyze universal education among children from
underprivileged section of society. The aim being that education should lead to change not only
in the amount of knowledge gained but also in the abilities to do, to think and to acquire habits,
skills and attitude which characterize an individual who is socially accepted and adjusted.

The term universalizsation includes universal enrolment, universal retention and universal
achievement of an acceptable level of reading, writing and arithmetic. Smile believes that
Quality Education is key to overcoming poverty in a single generation. And it is also
fundamental in creating a future for human security, community development and national
progress. It is an enormous challenge. It is also an immense opportunity!

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PEOPLE BEHIND SMILE
Smile Foundation is managed by a Board of Advisors which comprises of individuals from
diverse backgrounds and expertise. The body is formed for a period of one year and a few
independent members with eminence and reputation are nominated each year. Members of
this board meet once every quarter.

Mr. Santanu Mishra an Associate Member of ICSI (Institute of Company Secretaries of India), is
an Alumni of Indian Institute of Management (IIM-A). Mr. Yogesh Jagia, a Lawyer by profession
with specialization in economic laws, practices in Delhi High Court & Supreme Court of India.

Mr. Praveen Gupta is a Masters in Business & Economics(MBE) from Delhi University. He
advices to the top corporate houses in India on various strategic issues.

Dr. Ira Dash Rajguru, a Doctorate in Social Sciences with specialization in HR and Women Issues,
has been working with HR dept of Unicorp and subsequently worked as a HR consultant to
Ingramico, Icons & V5 Global.

Mission and Vision

As a Social Venture Philanthropist, Smile Foundation promotes and

catalyses universal education among underprivileged children, create
the process to embrace these children into mainstream in a sustained
manner, facilitate them to emerge as productive assets, and set the
foundation for nation building.

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 Programmes by Smile Foundation

Mission Education: It is a national level programme from Smile Foundation which focuses on
basic education for underprivileged children and youth. Smile believes that whether you are
addressing healthcare, poverty, population control, unemployment or human rights, there's no
better place to start than in the corridors of Education. The educational initiatives for
underprivileged children include Crèche [0-3 yrs], Pre-school [3-6 yrs], Non Formal Education [6-
14 yrs non-school going], Remedial Education [6-14 yrs school going], Bridge Course [14-18 yrs
drop-outs], Functional Literacy [18-45 yrs women] and Family Life Education for adolescent
girls. These projects support more than 100 grassroots initiatives working for the education of
very poor and underprivileged children in various states of country.

Smile Twin E-Learning Programme: It is such an initiative of Smile

Foundation that aims at creating a pool of young and independent
people, from the marginalized section, through skill enhancement in
tandem with market requirements. It is an effort towards bridging
the gap bettheyen demand and supply of skilled manpotheyr in the
fast em erging services and retail sectors of modern India. This
national level programme trains the urban underprivileged adolescent youth in English
Proficiency, Basic Computer Education and Soft Skills for enhancing their prospects of
employment in the fast expanding retail, hospitality and BPO sectors.

Smile on Wheels: This is a unique mobile hospital programme that seeks to address problems of
mobility, accessibility and availability of primary health care with a special focus on children and
women, in urban slums and remote rural areas. The Smile on Wheels programme at present
has 10 mobile hospitals which are operational in 126 slums and villages in 9 states of the
country. Since its inception in 2006 the programme has benefitted over 2,50,000 people.

Swabhiman: Its initiative of Smile Foundation, aims to bring pride and dignity for our girl.
Swabhiman, meaning self-respect, is a programme designed to enable women to realize their
full potential in every sphere, be it home, office or community. This programme helps in
enhancing the skills and information relevant to make them realize their self-esteem. Again,
Swabhiman is not anti-men, but it encourages women to defend themselves and escape from
violence and advocates men to be a part of bringing due dignity for our girl child.

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Partnerships and Alliances

The very foundation of Smile was laid on the realization of a group of young corporate
professionals that it was their Social Responsibility to give back to the society. In partnership
with many corporate bigwigs, it has brought sea changes in the lives of more than 100,000 less
privileged children and youth across 21 states of the country through more than 130 theylfare
projects.

Smile Foundation establishes partnerships and builds networks with national and international
development institutions with the prime objective to connect to their domain expertise,
resources, and strengths, with its own developmental initiatives undertaken at the grassroots
level. Along with the expansion and strengthening of existing programmes, Alliances at Smile,
focuses also on bringing innovations in its programmes through this association with the
developmental actors of the world.

Many prominent development agencies, donor organizations, academic institutions,

confederations and associations across the globe have joined hands with Smile to further its
development initiatives.

Smile Foundation has received support and encouragement from around 70 odd corporate and
institutions under various theylfare initiatives across federal India. Barclays, British Council,
Bank of America, Caterpillar, Capgemini, GAIL, GE, Ginni Filaments Ltd., HP, HDFC, HSBC, IBM -
Daksh, IDBI Bank, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, International Management Institute, Lotus
Herbals, Microsoft, Sandwood Infratech, SAIL, Suzlon Energy, TARGET, Tata Chemicals Limited,
TCS, The Grand Hotels, Times Foundation, UPS, Verint

Smile as many institutional and Edeucational Alliances such as IIM – Lucknow, Caterpillar
Foundation, Poarcter & Gamble, SAIL, Save for Children, GAIL, Soul City Institute, Population
Foundation of India, etc…

Many prominent development agencies, donor organizations, academic institutions,

confederations and associations across the globe have joined hands with Smile to further its
development initiatives. Lets discuss some of its partnership in detail.

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CRISIL family shares Smiles with Kids:
Smile Foundation organized an employee engagement programme
with CRISIL at several projects under Mission Education programme
across India in the month of May, 2010. Around 125 volunteers from
CRISIL at various locations participated in the programme, where
they interacted with the kids and conducted various fun-filled
activities for the underprivileged children. The group and solo dance
performances from the kids at all centers there so enchanting that
several volunteers from CRISIL there seen on the stage shaking their
legs along with the kids.

The drawing completion organised for the kids was made participatory as volunteers theyre
made to supervise the students to draw relevant sketches on environment related issues and
color them with crayons. There was also one of the kids favourite craft activity being organised
i.e., Pot Painting. Volunteers and kids fabricated beautiful pots together which shotheyd the
team spirit as theyll as a spirit of bringing the change through small steps. At the end of the
event, children bought their favourite gifts i.e., Soft Toys with the help of cheques. Prizes theyre
also distributed to winners of different competitions.

Barclays Bank

It has always been more than business at Barclays GRCB India. Upholding human rights,
supporting communities where the company has presence and contributing in the positive
development of the society has always been a priority at Barclays.

Continuing with the tradition of working for a social cause, Barclays GRCB India has joined
hands with Smile Foundation to transform the lives of more than 500 underprivileged youth of
India by providing them livelihood skills to increase their employability prospects in the fast
expanding service sectors.

Barclays is supporting the placement infrastructure of 50 Smile Twin e-Learning Programme

(STeP) centers across India. The Smile Twin e-Learning Programme (STeP) is a step towards
enhancing the skills of less fortunate youngsters keeping in mind the fast changing job market
requirements.

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 Benefits of Partnership

The partnership model enables companies to respond to the challenges of developing or

integrating their CSR policy, by providing them with access to organisations with experience in
making and evaluating social investments. Companies also benefit from the “reputational
capital” brought to a partnership by a theyll-respected NGO.

For NGOs, corporate partnerships offer an alternative source of funds at a time of increased
competition for traditional government and public funding sources.

More significantly, partnership brings a “chance to change the way that particular business, and
possibly a whole industry, operate

Advantages to Corporate:

Company reputation is becoming more and more important to both investors and consumers.
“A company’s impact on its stakeholders is an emerging benchmark of corporate performance
since stakeholders are beginning to ask what companies can do for society, not what society
can do for companies.”Trust has become a driver for partnerships bettheyen NGOs and
business because the public trusts NGOs more than it does companies.

Partnership can offer governments – particularly in developing countries - an opportunity to

shirk their responsibilities as corporate money and NGO resources are used to carry out
programmes that should be the government’s responsibility: “In many parts of the world
governments are retreating from their earlier broader role in society and the private sector is
being asked to fill the gap.

From Smile foundation point corporate partnership and alliances help them to complete their
aim of helping children’s. As the sponsorships is done by them and also the manpotheyr so it’s a
big advantage for them.

From Corporate point of view it helps in improving their Corporate Social responsibility towards
society. It also creates a social stand in the industry.

In the public eye, NGOs are more trustworthy than corporations in terms of benefiting society.
A company that partners with an NGO can hope to be seen as trustworthy and be more
credible in its attempts at CSR through this association. Maintaining trust bettheyen the public
and NGOs is the reason Heap believes that NGOs should not simply be playing an endorsement

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role with corporations but should be instead engaging with them critically. Thus, for a
corporation, it is “prudent to cultivate the public impression of socially.

Some companies trying to boost their public image have seen backlash from groups that
consider their efforts to be merely superficial and without any substance. Engaging in an actual
partnership brings to a company’s reputation a credible sense of commitment to social
responsibility. Business PR motivations are tied to economic incentives for companies to
maintain interest in NGOs. The potential for raising profits through ‘cause related marketing’ is
great, especially with increasing consumer education. Because corporate image has become
more important in retaining a competitive edge, is not enough for a company to appear to be
doing the right thing anymore. “The fact that a company chooses to form a partnership with an
NGO entails a higher degree of commitment than unilateral forms of community involvement,
and has a stronger impact on the corporation itself as theyll.”

Advantages to NGO:

Financial sustainability and funding diversification for projects as they have mentioned
previously, NGOs are under increasing pressure to diversify their sources of funding.
Partnerships provide a source of funding independent of government funding. One of the major
problems for NGOs in acquiring private funding is that they usually lack direct contacts in the
corporate world that would be a basis for potential donations. A partnership based on personal
relations bettheyen NGO staff and corporate executives could help solve this problem. But
partnerships entail more than a simple donation from a company. Actually engaging with
companies is recognition of the fact that “business can bring economic benefits to poor
communities by creating jobs and transferring technology.”

This approach is taken by those in the NGO community who consider both business and the
non-profit sector as necessary for tackling issues of poverty. They see both sides as having
valuable and complementary assets: the private sector is instrumental in creating employment
and economic growth and therefore has a direct impact on the lives of the poor; but NGOs have
expertise in working to strengthen communities to ensure that the poorest benefit from this
growth. Alleviating poverty requires both collaboration and coordination from both sectors.

Access to free marketing

Such partnerships also present an opportunity for NGOs to make their voices heard and to
publicize their activities through the marketing of a collaborating company. Since corporations
invest heavily in publicizing their involvement in social causes, NGOs in essence get “free”
advertising through what Heap calls “social marketing” on the part of corporations that
simultaneously enhance their brand image.

Management skill for improved efficiency

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From the perspective of NGOs, potential gains from partnerships with business go far beyond
financial advantages. It can be argued that private sector, although it “lacks sensitivity to the
needs of the poor” has much to offer the non-profit sector in the areas of financial
management and long-term planning. Individuals who work in the private sector have “insight
into different management styles and business skills; innovative, risk-taking perspective, the
injection of leadership capacity; [and] the ability to focus on making things happen and getting
results.”

Cost effectiveness is important, especially when funding resources are scarce. The non-profit
sector could benefit from incorporating some efficiency standards inspired by corporate
influence into its practices: “NGOs can capitalize on the skills and expertise of the individuals
involved through board participation, project development or employee volunteerism.

They can conclude from this research that corporate-NGO partnerships are a step in the right
direction in terms of influencing corporate culture as theyll as the non-profit sector in many
ways. Although partnerships may not lead to large scale improvements in sustainable
development and poverty reduction, they do have the ability to significantly improve the
livelihood of the individuals they specifically target. More time, and further analysis is needed
to see how these trends will evolve, and the importance they will take on in the future.

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 Conclusion

Organizations are coming to realize the bottom-line benefits of incorporating sustainability into
their DNA.  It’s beneficial for attraction and retention and it’s the right thing to do. HR is a key
organizational leader and can take the lead or partner with other executives to work cross-
functionally to integrate CSR objectives into how business gets conducted.  HR practitioners can
act as translators of the organization’s CSR commitment vertically and horizontally across
departments.  Most will find upon reading this report that they have many good practices
underway. 

Many will find they have a new structure for their thinking they can apply practically in the
workplace.  Some will believe the current economic downturn will put these ideas on the
backburner until the economy rebounds, while others think that organizations which abandon
their CSR integration in the downturn will lose ground and breed cynicism in brighter times. 
Regardless of the point of view, all agree that effective HR leadership on CSR integration
requires Board, CEO and executive commitment to be successful.  Indeed, the roadmap is
predicated on the assumption of this top level commitment.  However, more and more
organizations are committing to sustainability and to embedding CSR into “all that we do”, so it
is hoped the 11 steps provide some guidance as to how to go about doing this. 

The firm of the future is expected to have undergone significant transformation such that
CSR no longer becomes managed as a separate deliverable, but is part of the experience of
being an employee in an organization that lives its values.  For human resource professionals
embarking on CSR or deepening heir CSR experience, this roadmap can help them understand
their role in sustainability and CSR and how they can foster an environment that embeds
a CSR ethic in “the way we do business around here”.

CSR efforts by the beverage alcohol industry are supported in mature and emerging markets, at
the local, national and international levels, and in partnership with a variety of stakeholders
from the public and private sectors. By investing in CSR, companies are investing in
sustainability and broader economic, social, and environmental goals. CSR remains a beaming
light of success for improving the role of business in society—but is also an ongoing challenge
to which companies must remain vigilant, especially in emerging markets.

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 Bibliography

www.google.com

www.smilefoundation.org

www.wipro.in

Introduction to Corporate Social Responsibility - Guler Aras & David Crowther

www.indiacsr.com

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