At Accenture, we apply the same principles of high performance to our corporate citizenship efforts that we apply to our work. We work with nonprofit and community organisations to help them adapt to change, become more efficient and effective, work through times of crises and evolve to achieve their goals and serve our communities.
Accenture is a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact, the leading global standard for responsible corporate practices.
At Accenture in India, we adopt some guiding principles when we choose to support a corporate citizenship project. It must:
Watch the below video to hear from the Corporate Citizenship lead at Accenture in India, Kshitija Krishnaswamy, on our corporate citizenship efforts.
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Our Corporate Citizenship agenda is delivered through four means:
Global grant-giving Our global giving programme aims to secure sustainable livelihoods through programmes that build skills and resources for employment or income generation. Accenture Foundations across the world work closely to make financial and in-kind grants supporting livelihood generation projects often across multiple countries with the accent on long-term sustainability.
A noteworthy example of a global grant in action is our collaboration with African Medical Research Foundation to launch an unprecedented e-learning initiative to address a critical shortage of qualified nurses in Kenya. With classroom training, it would have taken 100 years to upgrade the skills of the 22,000 nurses in Kenya–using e-learning, it will take just five.
Another example of a global grant was to do with Oxfam Great Britain’s agri-scale up initiative—an exciting grassroots movement of fishing communities in the dry arid region of Bundelkhand in Madhya Pradesh, India. Since 2007, the Accenture-funded programme has enabled over 12,000 fisher-folk families to overthrow feudal control and gain communal access and rights to use about 250 ponds to earn their living.
Local grant-giving At a corporate level, Accenture in India is deeply committed to making a change in the lives of marginalised youth of the country who do not have access to education and opportunities for employment.
Despite India’s rapid economic growth, employment has not increased. In keeping with the nation-building agenda, our grants are targeted towards improving the livelihoods of disadvantaged communities and are complemented by the skills and commitment of Accenture people through volunteering of skills and time, pro-bono contributions and other programmes.
We are proud to have teamed with Dr. Reddy’s Foundation and the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, organisations that are championing the power of skills training to improve lives.
In collaboration with Dr Reddy’s Foundation and Livelihood Advancement Business Schools we established a training centre at Chennai to train undergraduate youth from impoverished communities in business process outsourcing and IT skills.
Employee Giving Programme Through the Employee Giving programme, Accenture in India endeavours to reach out to all its employees and make sure that those interested in serving the disadvantaged can do so easily.
We have teamed with seven nongovernmental organisations to focus on improving lives and education of marginalised children across Accenture locations. This programme has benefitted over 10,000 children.
National Volunteering Programme “Accent on Volunteering” is our national volunteering programme across all locations and workforces. It is a monthly programme based on different themes. Employees spend time with and help various nongovernmental organisations in a variety of ways. This has been a very successful programme with 1,750 employees contributing over 10,000 volunteering hours in FY08, with 40 percent of employees returning to participate in more than one cause in the year.
Employee Communities We have several employee communities across our businesses who come together to volunteer their time for various activities, such as rebuilding schools damaged by floods, spending time with terminally-ill children, etc. More than 900 volunteers across various workforces combined their efforts to form various communities to help and support different causes, contributing roughly 5,000 volunteering hours.
In FY08, seven new employee communities were formed, each adopting a chosen area of focus from imparting education to children to health care for the elderly.
Accenture Development Partnerships Augmenting the giving of grants and funds, Accenture facilitates initiatives such as the Accenture Development Partnerships (ADP) programme, which allows our employees to use their skills and time to bring positive outcomes to local communities.
This innovative programme aims at providing greatly discounted and high-quality consulting services to the not-for-profit sector—covering nongovernmental organisations, development agencies as well as foundations.
Pro-bono Assignments Our pro-bono programme helps facilitate our technology, consulting and core business skills to help the development sector achieve high performance. We work with local nonprofit organisations and make our experience and skills available to them at no cost.
Consideration for the environment is an essential part of how we operate. We believe it is important that our employees are aware of their individual responsibility towards the environment. We ask of our employees to consider the impact of their actions on the environment by building awareness, providing information and proactively engaging them in pro-environmental campaigns.
Awareness Our commitment towards building employee awareness on the environment began with the screening of Al Gore’s award winning film on the environment, An Inconvenient Truth, at our offices. This was followed by discussions and debates on the environment, during which specialists from organisations such as Centre for Education & Environment (CEE) spoke with our employees on critical environmental issues such as climate change.
We communicate regularly with our employees on environmental issues, focusing on generating awareness on environmental issues in the form of quizzes and snippets on information on saving power, paper and water.
Engagement Tree planting drives on which over 1,500 saplings were planted with the help of 250 employee volunteers, cycling events where volunteers cycled around Hussain Sagar lake, (11.5 kms) at Hyderabad carrying placards on global warming are some of the ways in which we help our employees engage with environmental issues.
A ‘switch off lights’ campaign was held across Accenture locations with lights being switched off for one hour during lunch, highlighting the need to save power.
To know more about what Accenture and its employees worldwide are doing to save the environment, view this video.