Mrs. Suman Minda, Chairperson of Suman Nirmal Minda Foundation (SNMF), the CSR wing of Uno Minda, is the driving force behind the Group’s CSR initiatives. Mrs Minda has played a vital role in the redesigning and repositioning of the Uno Minda Group’s CSR policy. Under her guidance, Uno Minda has conducted multiple community-centric programmes across India and at international locations in key areas like education, vocational training, preventive and curative healthcare, and community wellbeing and development.
In this interview with TheCSRUniverse, Mrs. Minda talks in detail about SNMF’s key initiatives including the flagship CSR programme Samarth-Jyoti. She also underlines the challenges the group faces in implementation of its livelihood project and the ways SNMF team works tirelessly to bring social change at the ground level.
Read the full interview with Mrs Suman Minda, Chairman, Suman Nirmal Minda Trust here...
Q: Uno Minda Group’s philanthropic arm Suman Nirmal Minda Foundation has been focusing on the areas of Education and Skill Development. Please share the impact that your work has created over the last 4-5 years?
A: We started this journey in 2012 with the aim of providing access to holistic education for underprivileged children through our innovative learning methods and our flagship project, Samarth-Jyoti. Going beyond just schooling, we also tried to integrate factors like quality knowledge, community support, innovative teaching and learning materials, teachers’ training and several other activities to run the school smoothly. Our extensive education initiatives have been designed especially for the underprivileged children belonging to the communities around us and cater to their access to quality education, encouraging students to participate in academic as well as extracurricular activities for their overall development.
Our projects have significantly brought changes in the communities, with our educational and skill development initiatives benefiting 16,536 people through educational and skill development projects and more than 1,50,000 people indirectly benefitting through our social intervention.
To evaluate the results of our various initiatives, we collaborated with Grant Thornton India for an impact study which after analysing every aspect acknowledged that for every Rs 1 spent by the organisation, the cost benefit attained by an individual is Rs 1.24. Our efforts have also brought a change in perception among students, which includes enhanced confidence, improved skills and knowledge, better decision-making in the family, and an increase in income after training by gaining employability.
Our remedial programmes and community school have played a prominent role in enhancing the academic performance of children through holistic development. Apart from academics, extra-curricular activities, life skills, regular parent-teacher meetings and counselling sessions have also been beneficial for students’ development.
Q: Your organization is also working on various projects related to Preventive and Curative Healthcare. What are your current health-related ongoing projects?
A: We strive to bridge the gap between basic healthcare and the underprivileged community by providing qualitative and accessible basic healthcare facilities. As a part of our CSR initiatives, we organise various health care awareness campaigns in collaboration with the health department and charitable hospitals for the communities around us. Our awareness campaigns focus on:
- Menstrual hygiene: We have been helping adolescent girls and women adopt sustainable practises by setting up sanitary napkin vending machines at our Samarth-Jyoti centres to encourage healthy hygienic practises. All our programmes are aligned with national and international causes, thereby strengthening the community in an overall manner.
- Dialysis support and Eye care: We are also committed to helping a significant number of poor community members with dialysis support and cataract surgeries every year as per their needs. As a special pilot initiative, Samarth-Jyoti (SNMF), in collaboration with VisionSpring India, covered approximately 5000 community children in Gurugram and other NCR areas last year to encourage good health and wellbeing.
- Blood Donation Camp: We also give importance to blood donations and have organised a blood donation drive in the past in collaboration with Sassoon Hospital, Pune. It was an effort to support medical treatments, build blood reserves, and engage the community.
We plan to scale these projects at the national level to support the maximum number of individuals with continuous upgradation of our ongoing health care programmes as per the communities’ needs.
Q: You have done significant work in skill building among youth. Please share the genesis of your Samarth-Jyoti Centres. What is the mission and vision behind these centres?
A: Uno Minda Group's CSR initiatives can be traced back to the last three decades and have been deeply involved with community and social service. However, it was formalized under the CSR arm of Uno Minda, the Suman Nirmal Minda Foundation. Since then, Project Samarth-Jyoti, the flagship CSR programme, has been running at various Samarth-Jyoti Centres that were established with a vision that emphasised building need-based skills to create a self-sustaining eco-system for youth, women, and rural communities. Our initiatives enabled and empowered youth and women with skill sets to live life with dignity and happiness, making youth economically independent. Some of our skill-building initiatives are:
- IT Literacy Programme: Specially curated for the youth, the group imparts computer programme learning, which helps the youth learn important aspects of Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. that could help them land a job in a company or use the knowledge in managing their own business.
- Cutting and Tailoring Programme: The programme helps women living in the nearby community learn skills that further give them the opportunity to work under an employer and to be self-employed. Thus, making them financially independent and contributing to the family’s prosperity.
- Beauty Culture: This is another programme specially designed for women that covers all aspects of beauty and grooming. It not only helps them to be financially independent but has also been very beneficial in enhancing their personalities.
Our mission is to reach and benefit the maximum number of youth in our operational areas to help them become competent to deal with the demands and challenges of everyday life.
Q: What are the key on-ground challenges you face while implementing your skill development projects?
A: We see skill development projects as a medium for youth to transform themselves into skilled human resources. There are many challenges we face while implementing these programmes on a short-term and long-term basis. Highlighting a few as given below:
- Logistics: Bringing students timely to the centre has been an issue, as students would any day prefer earning wages wherever possible. It takes us some time to explain to them the importance of skill development.
- Unable to understand the importance of skill development: The community around our operational areas is mostly daily wage earners who have been following traditional methods of employment by working as labourers or domestic helpers. They don’t understand the importance of being in an organised sector; hence, making them understand the importance of developing a skill that can give them a lifelong return is a difficult task.
- Forgoing daily earnings to invest in Skill Development: Majority of these individuals have a hand-to-mouth situation and think twice before leaving their current unorganised job to invest time in skill development that might require a few months.
- Hesitation to leave family responsibilities: Majority of the women that could benefit from these programmes often have a family to look after and are hesitant to leave behind their kids and the responsibility to work on their skills.
- Migrant Population: The major challenge we have noticed is that the women who enrol in these programmes mostly belong to the migrant population. The main income earner in the family is associated with temporary or petty jobs in nearby localities. The lack of stability in jobs also leads them to migrate from one place to another, which hampers the student's training to complete the course and utilise the skill in actual life.
- Difficult to track: We have observed that, after completion of a course, students are difficult to track either due to a migration or due to a change in their contact details. Hence, it is difficult to find and understand their employability status and if the programmes were able to support them in their livelihood activities.
Despite many challenges, our representatives have been working continuously to overcome these difficulties and contribute to the society.
Q: During the COVID pandemic, many social sector organisations started using technology in implementation and impact measurement of their projects. How do you see this evolution? How is your organisation using technology in programme implementation?
A: The COVID-19 pandemic has been ruthless; it was something that no one had ever imagined. There has been hardly any sector that has remained untouched by the consequences.
Us being no different than other were also forced to look for alternate methods so that the CSR work doesn’t get hampered. Also, our zeal to serve the community couldn’t stop us in doing so. We took help of the technology and adopted the following practices:
- Virtual Classes: We adopted virtual modes of practise, like virtual team meetings, for daily operations. We started conducting online classes for students and sharing class work through connecting platforms like WhatsApp. We shared appropriate worksheets, weekly plans, and question papers. We also made sure to connect with the maximum number of students virtually through Zoom Classroom.
- Digital Monitoring: Monitoring is a very important aspect of understanding the result of any effort that is put into achieving a vision. We made sure to monitor the classroom by recording Zoom calls and bridging any gaps, if any, in the upcoming sessions. For better understanding, we even trained students on how to use virtual technology.
- Elaborate Study Material: To make students understand effectively we created interactive and creative study material by using different tools like MS Office, Canva, etc. that helped them easily understand a certain topic and revise it. These notes were further shared on WhatsApp with them.
Technology thus played a crucial role during the Pandemic in improving work efficiency, time management, and quality learning outcomes.
Q. What are your CSR focus areas going to be for this year?
A: Uno Minda, being a responsible group, is aware of and very passionate about its responsibility to the community and believes in a holistic approach when it comes to improving the lives of individuals.
Education, vocational training, preventive and curative health care, community development and well-being have been our prominent focus areas and we will continue to work in these areas. With our dedicated volunteers, we have been running two big schools and a multi-bed hospital in addition to our regular services in the vicinity of our offices and plants.
We further focus on opening more Samarth Jyoti centres, further scaling our ongoing initiatives at the national level to support the maximum number of individuals. We also plan to increase the number of Senior Secondary schools, and look forward to continuous upgradation of our ongoing health care programmes as per the communities’ needs and expanding it to new regions.
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