Case study on CSR activities of Arvind

Abstract

After over two decades of successful journey at Arvind, Neeraj Lal, now Head of CSR at Arvind Ltd is considering how to redesign the company’s corporate social responsibility operations and policy in a more prominent way. As head of SHARDA trust (Strategic Help for Relief to Distressed Area), he supervises the CSR activities in areas of health-care, child education, Indian arts & culture in Ahmedabad. He has pioneered GYANDA-school model to re-invent & modernize municipal schools for child education. Targeting the problem of students dropping off from the school education as found in MoHRD report 2006, the program has evolved into a hand-holding model for 1200 students in class 5- 12th. The attendance rates are high, and the first batch of students graduating from class XII performed well compared to other public schools. Encouraged by the results, the company aims to change lives of 6000 students by years 2020, and ensure that this is the last generation in poverty for their families. Amidst the challenges of rising operational costs, difficulty in retaining quality teachers and increasing expenditure in other areas of activity, the company is trying to build up “Arvind Foundation” as an umbrella organization to handle all its CSR activities. The aim is to raise a corpus fund to scale up and finance its CSR activities for the betterment of society.