Her Dual Role
IMFA as a corporate was established in 1961 in the erstwhile Koraput district. The genesis of the company was a result of the thought process of bringing livelihoods to the people of Odisha and the philosophy since inception has been to carry our communities along. So essentially IMFA was already in or having operations in four districts of Odisha and was amongst the largest ferroalloys producers when I took over the mantle and my role since has been to craft the vision for IMFA CSR and you know that led to the formation of the Bansidhar & Ela Panda Foundation.
The foundation comprises values and ethos of the corporate and carries forward the legacy of community-centric growth. My role at IMFA is Phase One in which we underscore the importance of social development to the business teams at the corporate level and we look at it and point out the imperatives for aligning our CSR initiatives with the company strategy. Thereafter we work on the verticals to deliver the vision and select geographical locations for creating the impact investment framework and outcomes. The Phase Two which is my role at BIPF is really about implementing initiatives because we are one of the few corporates who work at the ground level on our own.
Bridging Gender Gap
The challenges are deeply entrenched in patriarchy and they manifest themselves through society norms, socio-cultural barriers, lack of awareness, unpaid care work and lack of self-belief. Limited access to education, skills, not having a voice in decision making at the household level and the digital gender divide are all the roadblocks that we’re talking about. In my mind it’s not about simply empowering women, it’s about creating an environment for them to thrive and for that to happen I think we need to redraw the stereotypical gender expectations for both men and women and this must be done across the family, the community and the workspace. So the fastest way to accelerate this is to address gender norms from early life stages by giving gender sensitive training both at schools and at homes.
Something that will really help this cause is community-driven change and behaviour change campaigns which are a tremendous way to create awareness through influencers, media, tech-aided communication and I think it’s very important to advocate to the masses that gender equity is not just about women, we have to make men a part of the solution.
Empowering Rural & Marginalised Women
Empowering women in the marginalised communities is really about a multi-dimensional approach because that is what is going to address both the immediate barriers as well as the long-term systemic issues that exist in society. The key is a holistic approach that combines education, health care, economic empowerment, including legal rights and a shift of mindset. To connect these marginalised people to gain access to the resources and opportunities that exist, I think we need agencies like ourselves who act as catalysts.
It’s very important to connect them to various schemes and interventions that are available. So to give an example, imagine connecting them to the Lakhpati Didi scheme that is very highly publicised but to get to the nitty-gritty and how to get there is the issue.
The second would be to promote financial and social literacy which I think India has done quite well in terms of SHGs. I think if we add customised solutions to SHG projects and enhance their capacities to enable them to make informed decisions, it will improve their socio-economic well-being.
And the third, again very important, is to garner the community buy-in. We need to change the mindset, we need to educate the community, the elders and the leaders in the community so that they accept empowered women in the society.
G20 Empower Group on Mentorship
The G20 Empower actually worked on three factors: women’s entrepreneurship, partnering for promoting women’s leadership at all levels, and education. And there was a cross-cutting dimension to this which was about giving them access to technology and digital tools. Given that, I think we did a very good job in terms of pushing the mentorship agenda for women because that is what helps navigate systemic challenges and gives them the guidance to break the barriers and access the opportunities. I think it’s important for them to get the exposure in the professional networks which will open doors to career growth and entrepreneurial opportunities.
And a platform like the G20 Empower Group on Mentorship is what allowed them to be able to get onto an aggregator platform to understand what are the various schemes out there and what are the various opportunities out there, whether it in financial linkages or market linkages. So I think that was very helpful and continues to be so in the space of mentoring women’s empowerment.
Reimagining CSR
I do believe that the key in this is strategic investments through CSR. We’ve come a long way in terms of the significant shift that CSR has had from sporadic charity to a structured impact. I think we are going to continue to evolve in this space from a compliance-driven activity to a more purpose-driven approach, focussing on creating measurable outcomes as well as long-term social impact. The cornerstone to leverage the power of CSR is more about harnessing the experience that corporates have in this space.
And that is why I believe that collaborations are the cornerstone for sustainable progress on achieving the SDGs by the 2030 target. We cannot work in silos. We have to look at the task ahead which is enormous and use partnerships to fuel efficiency on scale because it is knowledge sharing which will help us minimise duplication of work and these collaborations must certainly work with an eye on augmenting government’s efforts and work collectively towards the national goals and the SDGs.
And I’d also like to highlight here that there is a role that philanthropy has to play in this because philanthropy can put in the funds in the crucial areas where we need to bridge the existing gaps. It can also look at funding long-term interventions because we know that systemic change requires a long-term outlook and it can also provide the flexibility needed to curate local solutions. So I do believe that this is something which we are already seeing and I think we’re going to see a lot more impact from this space.
Project Unnati
We have collaborated with the government of Odisha on skill building where we have pushed forward the agenda of vocational training and I do believe that education and skill building are the two areas that are clearly about intergenerational change. The corporates are like foundations at the grassroots level. They understand the needs of the people and they understand how to listen to them, listen to their needs and curate a local solution.
So when I say skill building, it’s not just about skills in the vocational space. It’s also about the livelihood skill. One of our most successful projects is Project Unnati which is an SHG driven project for social and financial inclusion. At every stage we partner with the local administration for all the little initiatives that we can connect them to so that they’re able to avail those kind of linkages that are available in the ecosystem and that I think is what works as a win-win situation for the partnerships.
We have worked with close to 4,000 women already on this. In the coming year, we are looking at an expansion of about 30% on this project because we are also as a company expanding certain operations in other areas.
I think the outcome of Unnati is a very positive and satisfying one because after a three-year hand-holding process, we actually benchmarked the parameters for an exit policy and we make sure that it is only when those parameters are met that we actually exit and then go on to just the very distant hand-holding mode to ensure that they have at least some sort of mentorship continuing. So in a sense, it’s pretty much you can look at it like a group mentorship programme and it’s all about self-reliance as an outcome.
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