Mumbai: Mahindra & Mahindra was honoured with Pegasus Corporate Social Responsibility Gold Award at the recently held Pegasus CSR Awards 2007. M&M received this distinction for its initiatives in the field of health and education, i.e. the Lifeline Express project and Nanhi Kali respectively. Mr. Sushil Singh, Head, CSR – ESOPs Implementation, received the award from the Hon. Renuka Chowdhary, Union Woman and Child Welfare Minister.

'We are extremely proud to win this prestigious award for our CSR efforts. Corporate Social Responsibility has always been an important part of the working of the Mahindra Group since its inception in 1945. Education (with special emphasis on the girl child), Health and the Environment are the main focus of all our CSR activities and large numbers of Mahindra employees regularly dedicate their personal time and energy for several worthy causes across the country through our unique ESOPs or Employee Social Options programme,' said Mr. Rajeev Dubey, President (HR & Corporate Services) and Member of the Group Management Board, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.

Nanhi Kali is a national girl child sponsorship programme and a special project jointly managed by the K. C. Mahindra Education Trust (KCMET) and the Naandi Foundation and is aimed at providing education to the underprivileged girl child in India. Needy, underprivileged girls who are at risk of dropping out of government schools either due to financial constraints or social conservatism are identified and they receive special sponsorship which takes care of a range of education requirements, extending right up to improvement of the government schools they go to. The Mahindra Group currently supports 11,000 Nanhi Kalis and has garnered support for a total of 34,000 Nanhi Kalis.

The Lifeline Express is the world’s first hospital on rails and aims to eradicate avoidable disablement. The train provides free medical and surgical treatment to people suffering from four disablements: polio, cataract, deafness and cleft lip. Although in previous years M&M has co-sponsored the Lifeline Express, this year, for the first time, M&M decided to completely sponsor the Lifeline Express at Uttarakhand, where this project was held for the first time. The project was a success with over 600 surgeries performed in 24 days and more than 2000 patients benefiting from the services at the camp.

The Pegasus CSR Awards are being presented for the first time in India in recognition of corporate leadership for social responsibility and sustainable development initiatives. The Pegasus CSR Awards have been instituted by Reader's Digest to recognize outstanding work done by socially conscious companies. The Awards identify best practices and innovations of Indian corporates in fulfilling their responsibilities towards diverse stakeholders. In this process, Reader's Digest also aims to sensitize corporates to their responsibilities as good citizens of a fast-developing nation.

Corporate Social Responsibility at M&M

Corporate Social Responsibility has always been an integral part of the vision of the Mahindra Group and the cornerstone of our core value of Good Corporate Citizenship. The Mahindra Group believes that CSR is an opportunity and a privilege for us and goes far beyond managing corporate image. In order to ensure maximum impact, our CSR initiatives focus mainly on education and health.

The scope of our initiatives covers as many needy sections of society as possible, with a special emphasis on the girl child. The Nanhi Kali programme is deeply committed to the education of the girl child and currently supports the school level education of several thousand girls across the nation. The spectrum of CSR activities includes the K. C. Mahindra Education Trust, Mahindra Education Society, Mahindra United World College and the Mahindra Foundation.

CSR received a major boost in 2005 when M&M celebrated its 60th Anniversary by pledging to dedicate 1% of its annual Profit after Tax to social activities every year. As a way of thanking the nation and its stakeholders for 60 years of trust, M&M announced its own unique Esops, or Employee Social Options, programme with the goal of having a Mahindra employee contributing to society every day of the year, somewhere in the world.