Corporate Social Responsibility At Its Best

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the act of giving something back to the community by organizations that operate in a certain society. We would have seen a lot of companies doing charity and working with the community to help provide them different necessities of life, but the way things are done is not always the best ways.

There have been a lot of examples of CSR such as organizations supporting special schools. CSR is of several types out of which two of the prominent ones are:

1. Philanthropic Activities
2. Organizational Involvement


Philanthropic activities relate to the social responsibility in which the organizations are ready to write a pay check to donate it for any relevant cause. This only includes the funding of a certain cause, and the organization does not get involved in anything other then that. This is one of the most common ways of doing charity, which is considered good, but in my opinion is not regarded as high. The reason for this is that, the responsibility of the organization is not only to give the money back, instead they should also take part in supporting a certain cause.

Besides this, Organizational Involvement is a kind of CSR in which the organization gets involved to start supporting a certain cause. They start off from the first level and then build it up till the end in order to make sure that whatever they are doing goes to the right people. They also make sure that everything this managed and planned accordingly in order to efficiently support the cause. One of the most recent examples of CSR in Pakistan, that is spread everywhere in the media these days is of Mobilink. Mobilink, Pakistan’s market leader in cellular services and part of Orascom Telecom Holding, held a media briefing at a local hotel to mark the one month milestone of Mobilink Camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) established at Kund Park near Jehangira Town which is accommodating 1,000 families of IDPs. The kind of support that they have promised for the IDPs is tremendous with setting it up with about Rs 81 million funding by Mobilink. Mobilink Camp is the largest relief commitment for the IDPs from the private sector of Pakistan and aims.

IDPs residing in Mobilink Camp are provided with basic items including; tents, bedding, dry food rations, water buckets and coolers, floor mats, kitchen utensils, cutlery and crockery, personal hygiene kits including towel, washing and laundry soaps, tooth paste and toothbrush, combs and mosquito nets. Mobilink is well aware of the significance of education for the younger IDPs. To ensure continuity in their education, Mobilink has made provisions for primary and secondary schools for boys and girls. About 1,600 IDPs are being taught at the camp by 32 teachers. Mobilink Camp is not just about emergency relief for thousands of people in need. It is about creating a relaxing environment where IDPs can recover from their trauma in safety and relative comfort.

I quoted Mobilink's example because this is one of the biggest initiatives ever taken. Although other companies have been contributing to the cause as well, but this is what I personally would call "CSR At Its Best!"

Apart from this CSR also includes other activities like the following:

1. Employee Volunteering
2. Cause Promotion

Employee Volunteering is an act by companies where they actually help the community by lending their employees to the company. There are quite a few examples of this, where employees go to clean the beach, or go to special schools to play with the kids or at times even go to hospitals to spend a certain time with the patients and work.

Cause Promotion on the other hand is when a company starts marketing or promoting a cause along with their advertising.
This also happens when a lot of companies pick up one cause that relates to them and go to any extent to support that cause. This is also one of the most widely used practices.

Lets see how many more CSR campaigns take shape in the coming times, as the companies really need to move on with helping the society and giving something back.