Corporate Social Responsibility is a business imperative that is integrated into the strategic intent of our operations. Our community commitments are based on the values of our founders and built on the firm belief that businesses must be socially accountable and growth inclusive. Creating value for all our stakeholders by entering into partnerships with NGOs is, to us, the most enduring measure of business success. Towards this vision, we have evolved a comprehensive strategy that funnels resources into the Social Sector, Education, the Environment and Stakeholder Relations, all executed through institutionalised processes.
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“Living Responsibly”, our Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2009-2010, reports on the noteworthy contributions of successive generations of shareholders and the combined experience that has evolved into a corporate strategy to drive resources into the Social Sector Initiatives through Apeejay Trust. |
We believe, that each of us must treat wealth as an asset in our trust for the community. We believe that by adopting this as a value and making it part of our business process, our companies deliver "more" to stakeholders. We focus, through each group company on social sector partnerships within communities attached to the business. We stress, to our employees and new joinees the value of enrolling into the Individual Social Responsibility programme that encourages volunteering of their time and skills. By doing so, Apeejay shareholders and employees endeavour to, individually as citizens and collectively as a corporate, reach out beyond business to connect with the community.
Of Interest
UN General Assembly declaration resonates at Apeejay Surrendra Group
Apeejay Surrendra Group supports the UN General Assembly’s declaration to mark the tenth anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers (IYV+10) in 2011. Apeejay is pleased to align its pioneering Apeejay India Volunteering Awards initiative launched in 2011 in India to join the Global call of Action led by UNV.
United Nations Volunteers (UNV) is the nodal UN agency that contributes to peace and development worldwide through volunteerism. UNV believes in ‘Volunteerism for Development’. The concept of volunteerism for development centers on optimizing impact of volunteerism on peace and development. Volunteerism by many millions of people is critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. To see message of Ms Flavia Pansieri Executive Coordinator,United Nations Volunteers. Click here to know more | See Video
Recognizing and Rewarding Volunteers and Volunteer Engaging NGOs and Corporates
Group has created the first-of-its-kind national recognition focused on rewarding Volunteering and Volunteer engaging NGOs and Corporates . Soft launched on Republic Day, Jan 26th in association with i-Volunteer and International Business Leaders Forum, UK Apeejay India Volunteer Awards (AIVA) aims to identify champions in volunteering in India, raise awareness around Volunteering, celebrate and promote this much needed effort and drive Volunteering as a mainstream interest in Indians. This is a centenary initiative and the awards ceremony was held on Sept 25th 2011.Winners Announced |
Know our Awards Jury 2011 | Bookmark this Page and Stay Updated for 2012
Apeejay Tea Estates accorded Rainforest Alliance Ceritification
Rainforest Alliance Certification has been accorded to majority of our Tea Estates post an audit done by the independent international certification body, Sustainable Farm Certification International, which certifies to Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN ) standards. We are proud that nine of our Tea Estates are compliant & Certified as this helps us in our pursuit of our goals of an environmentally and social sustainable business.
Fundraising for UNICEF's Education support programmes
As part of our 100 year community initiatives an MoU has been signed with UNICEF by Apeejay Oxford Bookstores towards raising funds from Oxford Customers for Education projects for Children.
Click here to know more
Silver Award Winner of 2010 Community Partnership Awards: Culture, Media and Sport
In 2009 Typhoo began its partnership with the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) to make sport more accessible for disabled people across the UK. The 'Typhoo Sports for All' project set out to train at least 500 communitybased sports coaches across the UK and to provide them with an accredited qualifi cation in coaching disabled people free of charge, funded by Typhoo. The Typhoo and EFDS mission is to increase participation in sport and ensure disabled people can access sport at the level and venue of their choice. The programme has been a big success and Typhoo have now trained over 1130 community sports coaches, more than double the original target of 500. The spirit of the partnership is also echoed around the business, demonstrated no more so than by Typhoo's CEO who, as a keen runner himself, has taken part in the EFDS buddy scheme, partnering him with a fellow runner with learning difficulties and together they have trained and successfully completed both the Great North and South Runs, raising further funds for the charity. See Pictures | See Video
Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival debuts in Kolkata, the emblematic city of books
The Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival was created in 2010 as a Centenary Initiative and a gift to Kolkata meant to unveil the city's complex layered-ness, its vibrancy of thought and its engagement with the literary world at large. The Festival celebrates books, music, art, film and more with the finest creative minds in the nation as events unfolded at heritage sites. Launched in January 2010, the 2011 3-day festival was held from January 14-16th and brought to Kolkata a plethora of prize winning authors, debut writers, award winning filmmakers, literary prize winners, politicians, journalists, poets, photographers and artists in what was termed by guests as a winter of rich debate, entertainment and inspiration. Read More And See pictures of Curtain Raiser at Victoria Memorial and various events. Write to us if you want to participate in 2012 edition Events..
Talup takes the Lead in Women Welfare and Children Health Care
We understand that maternal health is the bedrock upon which India’s future is founded. A maternal and child health programme was launched in Talup Tea Estate in 2006 in coordination with the Government of Assam’s Health Department and as an extension of the goals set by the National Rural Health Mission. In 2008,the Janani Suraksha Yojana (mothers protection) for institutional deliveries was launched. In 2009, under supervision from the Health department, Government of Assam, the accredited social health activists (ASHA) who are voluntary workers, have started bringing pregnant women and children for ante natal checkup and vaccination. This programme has been extended to all hospitals in the 17 tea gardens and the team at Talup took the initiative to develop a nutrition programme which Apeejay Tea Group is now expanding across all its 17 tea gardens. Talup is , one of its largest garden employing more than 3100 workers. The team worked closely with the Assam Branch of the Indian Tea Association (ABITA) to identify and train women potentials within the tea estates as Accredited Social Health Activists. There has been a marked improvement in Maternal and Child Health and we know there is more to be done and a sustained effort is ongoing.
Green IT. Project Shakti receives Edge Award 2010
Group's Central Data Center hosting as many as 40 individual servers has changed the way it operates under Project Shakti. 22 servers have been migrated to a single hardware platform using two VM servers (HP DL360 and IBM X3650) and since then, the requirements of five new servers have been nixed to host all in same VM environment. With an assumption of average of 4 tons of CO2 emitted annually per server, roughly a savings of around 100 tons of CO2 has been generated annually; cooling cost for the Group Data Centre has been cut down by one fifth along with allied power and space savings. Apeejay Surrendra Corporate Services which runs Project Shakti received the Edge Award 2010 instituted by Information Week, an IT magazine from Business Week, UBM Group for this initiative. Read more| See Award Picture.
100% recycling and zero waste to landfill at our UK Tea Factory
Moreton UK, Typhoo Tea's production site in Merseyside has made big advances in minimising Waste and maximising Recycling. Since July 2010 Moreton has not sent any further waste to landfill and has now achieved the status of zero landfill factory. Moreover in Quarter-1 2011 Typhoo achieved 100% recycling target. A huge achievement with the help of National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), UK. Read more on Typhoo Tea's alliance with Green Bank and see chart on Moreton's year on year progress towards 100% recycling. Read more | See chart
IBLF, UK trains Apeejay’s NGO partners
A capacity building programme on cross sector partnering, developed by UK based International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) for the Group’s partner NGOs was held on August 2 in Kolkata. The Global Program of IBLF has previously been conducted worldwide for NGO partners of Nike, Microsoft, Rio Tinto, Shell, Nokia, Vodafone etc.
The programme, Building a Shared Language, was attended by senior managements of NGOs Nishtha, New Light, Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy (IICP) , Cini Asha, Focus, Bikash, North Bengal Council for the Disabled and delhi based The Tehelka Foundation who spent time training with Ros Tennyson, Director, Partnership Programmes, IBLF, on what needs to be done and went away with a Tool Kit to use in their next corporate collaborations. See Pictures | Read more
Supply Side control clampdown on Waste generation
To reduce supply chain waste, while importing a high volume of tea, Typhoo has initiated a leading project with the tea suppliers to bring tea into Moreton factory on slip sheets. This has the potentials of eliminating about 200 tones of wooden pallets from the overseas tea suppliers and save thousands of trees. See Pictures of waste we aim to eliminate, introduction of slip sheets and Typhoo recycling. See pictures
Launch of the Humanism Training Program
Sixteen year old children from Apeejay Schools and Apeejay Anand Library undergo the trainings called "Being Human" conducted by The Tehelka Foundation over July and August. Delivered as a Workshops series the training program focusses on re-discovery of, and, expression of core Human Values. The workshops track responses of the Youth to conflict, discrimination, violent situations and aim to train them in being human while tackling hatred and greed prevalent in modern day life. This is done through a variety of activities ranging from meditation and group interactions to theatre and creative writing, all aimed to focus on concepts of humanism and its expressions – transparency, integrity , accountability and more. Trainers from Tehelka spend some serious time with the young people
in July, almost 6 hours with each child, and will do so again in August in order to assist them to discover their true essence of Being Human. The second phase of workshops in August will have the children go for an outbound community engagement to Shanti Niketan, near Kolkata in West Bengal, where they will among other activities meet with local panchayats. See pictures | Read more
Apeejay Tea Estates awarded Fairtrade Certification
Fairtrade Labelling Organisations (FLO) International, through its Certification body FLO-CERT GmbH, awards this certificates to global Plantations which qualify. Such a certification impacts favourably the quality of life of the garden workers, bringing to them a host of economic, social and environmental benefits.
Health at Work Pledge
Towards employee well being at work, Typhoo has signed up to the Public Health Responsibility Deal and pledged
to take action which will help improve public health. These initial pledges entered ino with Department of Health UK form an important platform for future work.
The next tranche of pledges that we expect will go much further and demand even greater commitment and action on the part of industry and we look forward to continuing to work with the Government to broaden and strengthen the Public Health Responsibility Deal.
India's first LEED GOLD certified green hotel, The Park Hyderabad.
The Park, Hyderabad is India’s first LEED GOLD certified green hotel. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is an internationally recognized certification that measures how well a building or community performs across all relevant metrics such as energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality as well as stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. Read more
Launch of the Anand Paul Education Support Program
Promoted by Apeejay Trust, the Program seeks to enroll in school children from the poorest areas in and around Park Street, Kolkata. Children from Wards 59, 60, 61, 62 and 63 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation who have dropped out of school or are not enrolled in school are being identified and helped to return to school or gain school admission for the first time. In his address, Chairman Mr Karan Paul reiterated his family's commitment to Education , See Video | Read about Program
Education and Nutrition related grant to a brilliant young athelete
Grant awarded for 2010 and 2011 to support the quest for excellence of Sourav Saha, a promising 15-year old swimmer, a tea vendor's son who swums against the tide of deprivation to make a splash as a Junior National Gold (200m Butterfly) medallist in 2009. To inspire other children with his hardworking nature and success, the Grant recipient was invited to light the knowledge lamp at Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival and to enthuse the children to back to school and pursue their passions at the launch of the Anand Paul Education Support Program. See Pictures | See Sourav Saha's talent
Best CSR Initiative in the Region
This Award is given by the State Excellence Awards by Planman Media and Sunday Indian in recognition of the Social Sector initiatives.
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Putting Land to Sleep: As part of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) |  |
Creating Knowledge Leaders: From supporting meritoriuos students in higher studies to now encouraging excellence among new learners - The Paul Foundation. |
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Ethical Trading Initiative: Pursued through Quality Assurance Programme (QAP) |  |
Partnering Comprehensive Rural Development: Quality education through the Surrendra Paul Gramodaya Vidyalaya |
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| More resources Supply Chains and sourcing, please click here Higher Education Scholarships, Please visit us at www.thepaulfoundation.org Secondary & Higher Education, Please visit us at www.apeejayschool.in Professional Education, Please visit us at www.aih.edu.in |
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