How corporate volunteering can bring positive social change

Volunteerism has been at the forefront for the last two decades and is now a priority for the younger generation workforce that seeks to support causes that can bring positive social change.

In this direction, India@75 Foundation, a CII initiative, has been working for a decade to build and institutionalise volunteerism, with a significant focus on technology and digital literacy in the country.

India@75 Foundation organised a workshop in New Delhi on 24  March on ‘Corporate Volunteering: Better Social Capital. Stronger Business’. The event was aimed at bringing together social impact practitioners, corporate volunteering professionals and CSR experts to ideate and deliberate on leveraging the corporate volunteering ecosystem to be able to contribute towards making the world more equitable and sustainable. It witnessed active participation from 35 corporates and civil society organisations who have been invested in practising volunteer programmes to ensure an inclusive, compassionate and equitable workplace.

The workshop opened with an inaugural panel session on ‘Creating Equitable Workplaces and Influencing Social Impact through Corporate Volunteering’ that deliberated on how we can strategize and move forward towards creating workplaces that foster empathy and equity while influencing social impact through volunteering programmes. 

“Businesses have a very crucial role to play in leveraging the volunteering ecosystem by empowering their social capital and enabling their employees to influence social change,” said Ravi Pahuja, COO, Raman Kant Munjal Foundation, while moderating the panel discussion. 

“Corporate volunteering strives on three pillars through the PPP model in the society, which in turn creates the brand image of the company,” Vinay Kumar, director, Transform Rural India Foundation and Village Square, said. He further highlighted that urban youth have very limited understanding of rural communities, and this needs to be addressed strategically so that they can help these communities in transforming their lives.

Anurag Krishna, CSR regional head North India, TCS, talked about the importance of corporates in strengthening the volunteering ecosystem through their initiatives.

Suryadeep Verma, chief marketing officer, Comvia Technologies (a Tata Mahindra company), emphasised on how the explosion of digital technologies and changes in demography contribute to the volunteering situation in the country. He further emphasised the important and strategic role that technology can play in streamlining the volunteering ecosystem that connects people to opportunities. 

“Transformation should take place at the cultural and the ethical level because once these modes are addressed, it will generate a much bigger impact,” Talish Ray, managing partner, TRS law Offices, said.

Sushil Mishra, regional coordinator North India, Youth For Seva, said that the need to know and realise the difference between the emotion and responsibility towards volunteerism is a must and the way forward.

Through focused panel discussions, the workshop highlighted multiple critical aspects of corporate volunteering that need to be addressed to ensure that we are moving towards inclusive, equitable and sustainable workplaces and society in India@100.

The panel session was followed by the breakout group discussions among the participants in four groups. Each of the groups discussed a topic for one hour and then one representative from each group presented the key takeaways of their discussion. 

The purpose behind these breakout discussions was to engage them in deliberations and capture their thoughts on how we can leverage the volunteering ecosystem as we move towards India@100. Some of the key takeaways that culminated from the discussion are as follows:

Breakout Group 1 – ‘Leveraging the industry to mainstream the culture of volunteerism’

• Employees need to be encouraged to form their own employee voluntary groups

• Organisations need to help employees maintain their levels of commitment. They should help orient them culturally and set their expectations.

• Corporates need to build the culture of volunteering and community engagement in their organisations. Leaders must walk the talk and set an example.

Breakout Group 2 – ‘Remote volunteering and its role in influencing social impact’

• Technology has a big role to play here.

• Organisations need to prioritise skill matching – volunteers should be assigned opportunities that match their skill sets.

• Remote volunteering can result in scaling up multiple initiatives of organisations and can further help the organisations in digitising their social impact through informed use of technology.

Breakout Group 3 – ‘Institutionalising the culture of volunteering in our country’

• Government can play an important role as an enabler by anchoring volunteering in a ministry.

• Digital technologies can be leveraged to converge different stakeholders, including civil society, corporates, individuals and government institutions.

• Civil society has an important role to play by proactively engaging with aggregators and promoting the public volunteer platforms such as National Volunteering Grid to increase engagement.

Breakout Group 4 – ‘Role of corporate volunteering in reducing the digital divide and fostering social inclusion’

• Vocational training of the volunteers on such concepts including digitalisation, social inclusion, and how it impacts the communities is a must.

• Programmes such as The FLiP (Functional Literacy) that cater to enhancing digital skills of people need to be promoted and implemented in volunteering mode. This will help empower urban youth and employees to help rural communities in helping them navigate digital way of life.

• Corporates and civil society need to find ways to collaborate and work together through implementing grassroot movements.

Conclusion

The workshop highlighted that all the key stakeholders need to come together to streamline the culture of volunteerism as we move towards India@100 to build an inclusive and sustainable India. Some of the key takeaways that converged from the workshop include:

• When corporates begin to connect social capital with their bottom line, important components of community engagement and corporate volunteering will begin to fall in place. A shift in perspective is needed here.

• Corporates need to build the culture of volunteering and community engagement in their organisations. The business, social and human values of an organisation need to be aligned for this.

• Volunteering needs to be seen not as an act of charity but a tangible and intelligent way of making a change, however small. This can further help in creating a sustainable volunteering ecosystem in India.

• Government needs to bring forward proactive policy legislations that support volunteering efforts across the country.

• Both industry and civil society will need to be more consultative and less transactional for true impact.