Chennai: As part of its annual D&I Conference, Best of the Best 2020, Avtar and Working Mother today announced the winners of Excellence in CSR and Male Ally Legacy (MALA) awards. The award properties, under its Puthri Excellence for CSR category aims to honour CSR initiatives by companies towards the impact created for economically empowering underprivileged women and celebrate Male Allies at workplace who have spearheaded the change in mindsets, under its Male Ally Legacy Awards (MALA) category.
The Puthri Awards for Excellence in CSR was conferred upon Johnson & Johnson Pvt Ltd for their project ‘Strengthening the Healthcare Workforce: Capacity Building for Auxiliary Nurse Midwives’. The two-fold program aims to provide healthcare facilities to remote rural areas and enable employment opportunities for underprivileged girls who have limited options. The programs enable girls to complete a two-year residential course free of cost (which includes course fees, accommodation, food, uniforms and stationery), subsequently helping them get placed in village health programs.
Following this, the Male Ally Legacy Award (MALA) 2020 was conferred upon Deepak Iyer, MD & President of Mondelez India Pvt Ltd, as a Male Ally Champion, Deepak Iyer has been driving diversity efforts across the company, which is evident through the 50 percent diversity in the company’s marketing teams and entry talent. Further, he has driven focus on diversity beyond the head office, to include women in leadership in the sales and supply chain teams. Continuing to be an influential and inclusive leader, Deepak Iyer is also an advocate of equal pay, as a result of which Mondelez India has a zero gender pay gap.
Commenting on the occasion, Dr Saundarya Rajesh, Founder – President, Avtar,said, “It gives us immense satisfaction to bring forward these winners on one grand platform and celebrate their efforts in building a strong, diverse and inclusive community. The winners and learning about their dedicated efforts in the space of D&I is truly encouraging for us to further expand our horizon. We are confident that the winners of this year’s CSR and MALA awards will be role models for Corporate India and will steer impactful changes across communities.”
With the theme ‘Ignite Potential’, the 4th Edition of Best of the Best conference 2020 was hosted virtually. The two-day conference was inaugurated today and had power packed session addressed by D&I virtuosos from all across Corporate India. The second day of the conference is also set to host ground breaking discussions covering several dimensions of D&I.
The winners of this year’s Excellence in CSR and Male Ally Legacy Awards (MALA) are as follows:
Puthri Awards for Excellence in CSR
Title Winners: Johnson and Johnson Pvt Ltd
Project: Strengthening the Healthcare Workforce: Capacity Building for ANM
Envisioning to curb the subsequent health and survival issues, the ‘Capacity Building of Healthcare Providers’ initiative was launched, wherein the support is provided for the training of ANMs at Bel-Air Hospital in Panchgani, Maharashtra, and St. Joseph’s Multipurpose Health Worker Training School, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh. The program at Johnson and Johnson is two-fold — To provide healthcare facilities to remote rural areas and enable employment opportunities for underprivileged girls who have limited options. The programs enable girls to complete a two-year residential course free of cost (which includes course fees, accommodation, food, uniforms and stationery), subsequently helping them get placed in village health programs.
Choice of Jury 1 :Genpact
Project: UdayanShalini Fellowship, Mentoring, and Employability Program
The UdayanShalini Fellowship, Mentoring, and Employability Program invite employees with the required expertise and domain knowledge to volunteer, who are subsequently assigned to various Shalini batches. As part of the key CSR initiative, Genpact has been sponsoring the UdayanShalini Mentoring Program since 2014 through the following initiatives:
Sponsoring higher education andEngaging in mentoring and coaching students to help them up-skill and stay motivated.
The facilitation of workshops is a key element of the program, which has hitherto covered an extensive range of topics ranging from the executive presence, stress management, leveraging technology, career orientation and guidance, financial planning, health and fitness, interview facing skills, basic computer skills, career counselling, and safety and security training. A total of 24 mentoring workshops were conducted, and 1858 Shalinis (girls) have benefitted from this, becoming employment ready. The program is also the largest beneficiary of the employee payroll program of Genpact, which is initiated through Give India.
Choice of Jury 2 : IBM INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED
Project: STEM for Girls
The STEM for Girls is IBM’s premier CSR initiative started in 2019. The vision is to reach out to over 200,000 girls in three years, to inspire and motivate them into the world of STEM. Through 21st-century skill-building, computational thinking, and agency building, the program has been providing to the girls of Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India. Also, with MoUs signed with ten states in India – Karnataka, AP, Telangana, Bihar, Assam, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, and Odisha, the program is designed to create meaningful learning outcome for the students. The curriculum is co-designed by IBM and Quest Alliance, the Primary Implementation Partner, which majorly works on curriculum design, stakeholder advocacy, and overall governance of the program. It also has a second National Implementation Partner, AIFT (American India Foundation Trust) and ten sub-partners. KPMG is also onboarded as the Impact Measurement Partner.
The first year of the program saw the participation of over 78000 girls and over 35000 boys from over 893 schools around the country. The program covered 91 districts in India with 302 facilitators of which, 72.5% were female facilitators. The curriculum is a 45-hour pack with modules on Identity, building agency skills, gender sensitization, career counselling, and good exposure to technology through the introduction of Scratch in classrooms.
MALA – Male Ally Legacy Awards
Title Winner: Deepak Iyer, MD & President, Mondelez India Private Limited.
As a Male Ally Champion, Mr Iyer is the ambassador of diversity, which is evident through the 50 percent diversity in the company’s marketing teams and entry talent at Mondelez India. Further, he has driven focus on diversity beyond the head office, to include women in leadership in the sales and supply chain teams. He has also sponsored the establishment of affinity groups like the SalesforHer Community which has helped shape policies and practices around travel, stay and work environment to ensure safe, bias-free support to the field sales teams. As a result, 30 percent of the P&L roles in Sales and 34 percent of the Leadership team +1 (Extended Leadership Team) roles are held by women leaders. Continuing to be an influential and inclusive leader, Mr Iyer is also an advocate of equal pay, as a result of which Mondelez India has a zero gender pay gap. Mr Iyer’s commitment to diversity and support of women leadership over the years has driven Mondelez India’s initiatives, policies and focus.
Choice of Jury – 1: John McGrory, Head of India Global In-house Centre (GIC)
John McGrory is the Head of India Global In-house Centre (GIC). Over the last 2 years, he has made a significant impact in driving the Diversity and Inclusion strategy for India. Through his efforts our overall representation of women grew from 35% to 38% over the last one year, including an increase in female representation at senior management levels from 19% to 21%. Apart from workforce representation, John also ensures that the various senior management groups and committees in the India GIC have adequate female representation.
John is the co-chair of the India Diversity Council which has been instrumental in building the Diversity and Inclusion strategy for India. John also initiated diversity reviews in order to hold business leaders accountable for their diversity goals. He is a key sponsor of various programs such as the Return to Work program, the flagship program for developing women at the Vice-President level, the Inclusive Manager Program and the various Employee Network Groups.
Choice of Jury – 2: Manish Sharma, Principal, ZS Associates – Choice of Jury
“Manish has been an early proponent of Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) at ZS, and one of the founder members of the I&D council. He has spear-headed several initiatives to help achieve various I&D goals for the firm. In addition to being the founder member of the I&D council, he has also contributed in an active and inspiring way as a core team member of the Women Leadership Initiative (WLI) which is one of the key I&D groups at ZS. As a strategic partner on the council and an active Male Ally on the WLI team, Manish has played a pivotal role in advancing our existing practices that enhance the experiences of ZSers by fostering an inclusive work ecosystem. As a male ally, he has always championed the idea of allyship – moving it from thoughts to plans and to action.
