Persistent Foundation, the CSR (corporate social responsibility) arm of Persistent Systems Ltd, celebrated its annual day recently. This fiscal, the foundation contributed Rs1 crore towards social work and supported 44 institutes/ NGOs through its offices in Pune, Nagpur, Goa and Hyderabad.
DNA spoke to Sonali Deshpande, chief trustee and chairperson of the board of trustees about present activities and future plans of the foundation.
What was the idea behind starting Persistent Foundation?
Since 1990, Persistent Systems has been donating 1% of its profit towards CSR activities. The company provided financial aid to many areas. We wanted to have one umbrella under which all these activities could be accommodated to develop a systematic approach to administer the process of grant of donations. Hence, we came up with the idea of starting Persistent Foundation two years ago. This foundation is not
just a company initiative, but a
registered public charitable trust
working towards the welfare of
the people.
What are the focus areas for your CSR activities?
The foundation is involved in three key areas namely: health care, education and community development. We work with NGOs on three levels: we provide direct financial aid to them; involve our employees in NGO projects through the company’s CSR programme; and provide help externally to NGOs with which our employees are working independently. Some of the activities are infrastructure development in schools and villages, exhibitions for promoting NGO activities, breast cancer screening, blood donation camps, H1N1 vaccination camps and scholarship programmes.
How are the employees involved?
Our programme of involving our employees is unique. At present, 500 employees are involved in CSR activities, either independently or with the foundation. Under the social entrepreneurship programme, we are inviting social welfare projects from our employees. They can recognise an NGO that falls under the three focus areas of health, education and community development or even come up with an NGO they are working with independently. They will then have to present to us what the NGO is doing, the kind of help it needs to achieve its goals and the foundation will provide the required help. Thus, if manpower is needed to make an event successful, the foundation will involve Persistent employees in the activity. We already have 30 projects under this programme.
Some employees also give a part of their salary towards CSR activities such as sponsoring a child’s education or a meal for special children at an NGO.
What are the future plans?
Every year, we have a different theme under our three focus areas. We are planning to focus on children’s health, needy and rural people and plan to adopt an under-developed village close to the city. We will bring about its overall development from providing basic facilities of health care and hygiene to the villagers to providing education.
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