Financial Times

Awards to help drive CSR in education
By Quintus Perera
Awards are not just achieved by the Chairman or the Board of Directors of a company but through a team effort essentially based on the hard work of the rank and file of the organization, a top human resources specialist noted.
“In this context people look for companies which are responsible and which care for the community around them,” said Dr Anura Ekanayake, Human Resources and Corporate Relations Director, Unilever Sri Lanka (USL).

He was responding to a question from a reporter as to whether awards for corporate social responsibility mean anything to the company and spurs to do better things for the community in the future. The press conference was called recently to announce the CIMA/The Sunday Time Business Club Community Leader Awards 2006.

In the second year of this prestigious award scheme, CIMA and Business Club BC is this time joined by Unilever Sri Lanka as the key strategic partner while UNICEF also plays a key role as another partner of the 2005/06 project. The focus is on education and recognizing private sector initiatives in this field.

Unilever won the Gold Award at the inaugural CIMA/ST Business Club Community Leader Awards ceremony earlier this year for waste management and concern for the community.

Dr Ekanayake said that their experience (in participating in the event) showed that something worthwhile could effectively be done by partnering in the awards scheme for the second year.

“Why we see it is important is for the simple reason that as the influence of corporates on the overall wellbeing of the society increases the way forward is for them to be socially responsible and for the society to adopt formal and informal mechanisms to encourage such behaviour.”

He said that in the economy less than 1/4 were employed in the government sector and in such a situation like this with such influence of the private sector, there are two ways – formal and informal - of executing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

The formal method is where the government decides by legal enactments with a set of rules and regulations which requires a policing mechanism in place.
But he noted that the more powerful way of ensuring CSR is for industries and corporates as well as the society to develop more informal ways and means to enroll people to the agenda of awards programmes like the Community Leader Awards.

Thus the question of enforcement would not arise and this way it would be much more effective. He said that as far as Unilever is concerned they have been involved in CSR for a long time and general education as well as vocational education for the school leavers has been right at the top of their agenda.

The company placed education important for the reason that the economy is rapidly moving towards a knowledge based economy and society is also a knowledge based society.

“The more we do in the field of education, the better it is for the country.”
Dr Ekanayake said that one must recognize that the government cannot be expected to meet all the requirements in this important field and still there is a difficulty in matching the needs of the economy through education and if there are any partnerships involved by the corporate sector, it becomes essential.

Ms Padmini Ranaweera, Education Officer, UNICEF, said that as promoters of child rights UNICEF appreciates the fact that CIMA and The Sunday Times Business Club have selected education as a CSR project. To give awards in education is important for the development of the economy and the role of the business community is identified as something that is needed.

She said that more than 10,000 schools come under the government educational system and 70 percent of them are in the rural sector. Though some schools are very close to each other there is a vast difference in resources as some schools have more while others have less. There are so many things that have to be done in the educational system in this country and the government alone cannot attend to all of them.

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