Designing effective corporate social responsibility;

Again I would say it depends upon. It means it depends upon the particular corporate sector and the focused community on which it has a bigger impact. Suppose one paper manufacture company is thinking of its CSR work it must think about nature- who is supplying the raw material, the environment- which is getting polluted and the people- who are staying nearby and actively participating in all these. In India years back this CSR work was going on in the name shake only. Health camps, distribution of few education materials, clothes to the poor children were the major programs those were carried out under CSR. Then the situation changed and time and again, the big corporate were asked by the country's government to take up few social responsibility for the betterment of the society and it has become mandatory for the corporate sectors to invest a considerable percentage of their profit for societal development.

I am not going to write what types of activities and programs one must take up in CSR as most of us understood in that way by seeing the caption of the article. I am going to emphasize the process we need to follow in designing effective corporate social responsibility. By this way we can definitely avoid the mistakes of designing a HQ driven or the top bottom approach of programming. Because this is the fundamental mistake we all do while designing social development programs.

First of all we must consult the community where we want to implement any developmental work. In many cases where Industries and companies are coming out it has been observed that the affected people are not accepting the CSR work as it does not meet their need. I am giving stress in those communities we must design a participatory program, with a punch of academic inputs. Suppose we are thinking of a particular country then we must analyze what are the real issues the people are facing, what is the exact need of the people and what will be the best way to address the issues. I will strongly emphasize we must not think of taking the service provider role and doing charity.

The basic principle is that a generalized program can not solve the problem of the different community of the globe. Communities differ from each other on the basis of culture, life style, belief etc. So the CSR works and design must differ from country to country, region to region, community to community. So we must sit with the people, consult with them to address the real issues, design the program by them to address the issues etc.

Some minimum programs on education including employable skill training, health, environment, periphery development etc can be considered while designing the CSR activity. In addition to these we must incorporate the capacity building of the community as one part of the program to make them responsive for dealing different issues.

Responsibility means accountability and duty. Our CSR must contain both these two ideology so as it can give better output and result.

Learn more about this author, Birupakshya Dixit.
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