CSR arm of Ambuja Cements empowered 2.7 million beneficiaries in 2020

Ambuja Cement Foundation (ACF), the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of Ambuja Cements Ltd, has reached out to 2.7million beneficiaries.

In the year of pandemic, it has extended its reach and successfully touched the lives of 15.6 lakh community members in 2020. These include various community-led CSR programmes for health and sanitation, livelihood generation, women empowerment, education and water resource management. ACF works with communities around the manufacturing sites across 11 states to enrich and uplift their lives.

“Ambuja Cements has been at the forefront of undertaking community development initiatives. Empowering 2.7 million community members is a testament to our innate ethos of energising, involving and enabling communities,” said Neeraj Akhoury, CEO & MD, Ambuja Cements.

“The COVID-19 pandemic was far from a deterrent and we continued our efforts to uplift the lives of the community members. We also sprang into action with our COVID relief interventions focused on the safety and well-being of the communities and helped as many people as we could,” said Pearl Tiwari, Director and CEO, Ambuja Cement Foundation.

With an eye on the future, Ambuja Cement is progressing well on its key strategic priority- Sustainability & Sustainable Development (SD) Plan 2030. The SD Plan 2030 has a sharper focus on climate and energy, building a circular economy, conserving resources and nature, and driving meaningful change in the lives of communities. This in line with its vision to become the ‘Most Innovative, sustainable and Competitive Building Solutions Company’ in India.

Ambuja Cements has consistently channelled its efforts towards socially and financially empowering communities through various initiatives.

Under its agro-based livelihood generation programme, ACF extended animal husbandry projects to 15 locations covering 9,629 families. Furthermore, over 48,000 women farmers participated in training sessions conducted by the foundation maintaining an overall outreach of 2.1 lakh farmers this year.

As part of its skill and entrepreneurship development initiative, ACF trained over 65,000 people with 74% of the graduates getting placed in different organisations. During the lockdown, the institute adapted to virtual training and successfully trained 5,742 students and ensured job placements to 4,269 of them.

In 2020, the company also worked towards water management and with this focus developed and revived 127 water harvesting and recharge structures amounting to the storage capacity of 1.10 million m3. Since safe drinking water is on the government agenda, ACF took an approach to initiate community participation in water distribution and surveillance of water.

Health & Sanitation has been a major focus for community development. The Maternal and Child Healthcare (MCH) interventions reached additional 15 villages covering 31,311 families. The nine community clinics established to cater to 48 surrounding villages treated 1,186 patients during the year 2020.

Non-communicable diseases have resulted in a big health issue in the communities. Thus ACF is now actively tackling this issue by extending project interventions to 183 villages in 8 different locations.

During the year, the foundation assisted 813 SHGs to apply for the COVID Sahay Loan to receive Rs. 4.26 crores as livelihood support. It also enabled women to make 5,65,305 face masks that were sold to health authorities, medical stores and even to Ambuja Cement.

With education being a key pillar for sustainable development, ACF introduced teaching aids and built capabilities for students and teachers alike. In a period of three years, 88 schools received ‘A’ grading as compared to just 3 in 2016, reflecting a 350% jump.

Since COVID-19 took priority in 2020, ACF continued to focus on protecting the community through sanitation of villages and relief work. Through frontline workforces and other village-level leaders, ACF was able to maximize awareness and curb the virus in its core villages.

Disclaimer: This media release is auto-generated. The CSR Journal is not responsible for the content