Six-member BS jury picks the best three in CSR

Sanjit Roy is Social Entrepreneur of 2016; Pratham Education Foundation is Social Enterprise of 2016

Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy, who turns 72 this August, has spent the past four decades of his life living the dream of creating self-sustaining village communities — not only in India but in 77 other countries, across 1,300 villages. The alumnus of Doon School and St Stephen’s College is the founder of Barefoot College, a place that skills rural women and communities to be self-reliant and sustainable.

And for more than 10 years now, the Axis BankFoundation has been working with a set of initiatives aimed at providing sustainable livelihood opportunities in some of the remote regions of the country and its goal is to provide sustainable livelihoods to a million people by the end of 2017.

Or, consider Pratham Education Foundation. One of the biggest non-government interventions in the education sector in India, it reaches close to six million students across the country today.

These are the stories that have possibly inspired hundreds of companies and individuals to step up their efforts to make their businesses socially responsible and relevant.

So, it was not a surprise that their efforts were recognised by an eminent jury, which met in New Delhi to select the winners of the Business Standard Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Awards 2016 to recognise the best Social Entrepreneur, Socially Aware Corporate and Social Enterprise.

Headed by S Ramadorai, chairman, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the jury included Sunita Narain, director-general, Centre for Science and Environment; Vijay Mahajan, founder-chairman, Basix Group; Deep Joshi, co-founder of Pradan; Reema Nanavaty, secretary-general, Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and Anshu Gupta, founder, Goonj. Deloitte was the knowledge partner for the exercise.

Source: Business Standard