Corporate Social
Responsibility

Volunteering with the OSCAR foundation - 10 volunteers participated in team building and English language development activities with underprivileged children. More than 12 children from the OSCAR foundation were invited to the Avendus Mumbai office for an exposure visit.

Volunteering with NGO Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled - 10 volunteers visited NGO Samarthanam Trust for the disabled in Navi Mumbai. They guided more than 10 specially-abled students by helping them in interview preparations.

Volunteering and exposure visit with NGO Kherwadi Social Welfare Association - 3 volunteers visited NGO Kherwadi Social Welfare Association’s centre in Bandra. They guided more than 30 disadvantaged youth in soft skills development, mainly in self-introduction. Also, 10 students from the NGO visited the Avendus Mumbai office for their exposure visit, and 7 volunteers guided them in resume building and interview process.

As a part of project Swasthya, a medical check-up camp was organized in association with Hinduja Hospital Trust.60 specially abled students from NGO Samarthanam Trust were given a complete medical check-up.4 volunteers from Avendus assisted students and doctors during this camp. The camp included check-ups related to vital signs, hygiene parameters, basic screening for skin, lungs, eyes, oral check-up, and nutrition deficiency.

Project Eklavya aims at mentoring women entrepreneurs through eight eight-week journey where our volunteers guide them in their business expansion and soft skills improvement. Women entrepreneurs are selected by our partner NGO, Swayam Shikshan Prayog, from our known cohort in the Latur district in Maharashtra. A total of 12 volunteers and 16 women beneficiaries are part of Project Ekalavya.

The following topics are covered under project Eklavya:

• Introduction and assessment of the businesses
• Digital Accessibility and cyber fraud
• Financial literacy
• Market linkages/ promotions
• Business promotions
• Nutrition management/Hygiene and safety
• Business visibility and expansion
• Waste management

In 2019-2020, Avendus Group collaborated with 5 NGOs focusing on two areas - Women Entrepreneurship and Sports Training. Over the past year, our relationship with these partners has only grown stronger.

This time around, we hosted Avendus Impact Day 2020, where current partners, new NGOs and passionate Avenders presented their vision for the coming year. With an ambition to deepen our impact, we celebrated our NGO partners’ inspiring stories and their plans for the future, all of which ensured that the event was a roaring success.

In partnership with Avendus CSR, Antarang has launched its ‘career ready’ program. The idea is to champion women’s entrepreneurial dreams by connecting young and eager students with experienced mentors from Avendus for a period of one year.

"It takes six grams of gold to lift the worth of a nation."
Arjuna Award winner and CEO of Olympic Gold Quest, Viren Rasquinha, visited Avendus to shed light on the benefits of investment in sports. He introduced the Avenders to OGQ and explained its mission to put India on the global map by helping Indian athletes win gold medals at the Olympics.

Avenders embarked on their first field visit with our partners at Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP). We met 70+ small business owners in Wagholi and Osmanabad, which will aid us on our journey of helping marginalized women become self-sufficient entrepreneurs.

Avendus visited Sarola in Latur, Maharashtra with our CSR partners Swayam Shikshan Prayog. We had the privilege of meeting trailblazing women entrepreneurs who are collectively building sustainable dairy and allied agriculture businesses.

In 2019, Avendus held “Live Pitch”, as a first CSR event, and invited eight NGOs working in women entrepreneurship to present their projects to an eminent panel of jury members. The ones selected would win grants from Avendus. It was our honor to host Mrs. Rajshree Birla, Mr. Amit Chandra, Ms. Samina Vaziralli and Ms. Ameera Shah, who were all well-known philanthropists, as our jury members for that event.

They picked two winning pitches. Our first winner, Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP), has been empowering grassroot women’s collectives for the last 20 years, and has helped 1.5 lakh women to become entrepreneurs. Second winner, Antarang Foundation envisions a world in which every young person passionately and productively pursues a career of his/her choice. They have transformed the lives of over 50,000 vulnerable youth, especially young women. Through this event, employees were involved in creating leadership and awareness about our CSR projects.

Joy of Giving Week celebrated in 2022 at Avendus with its NGO partners with following objectives

• Connecting employees with our NGO partners from the perspective of volunteering.
• Highlighting abilities of our women entrepreneurs through highlighting their products with Shop for a Cause Campaign.
• Fulfilling wishes of our beneficiaries through setting up the Wish Tree.
• Creating an awareness among employees about mental health through an interactive workshop.
• Weaving workshop with Avendus employees from NGO for employee engagement.

As an impact of this event

• 211 employees participated in the volunteering event.
• INR 57,080 raised though Wish Tree Campaign to support our partner NGOs
• INR 82,501 raised by employees through Shop for a Cause Campaign

Avendus has organized employee engagement visits to our CSR project site. Two such visits were conducted with our partner NGO Swayam Shikshan Prayog at the field site in Latur – Maharashtra region. SSP had been providing training to women in these regions in areas like dairy farming, cattle care, improving milk quality, organic farming of vegetables and pulses and vermicomposting.

These visits focused on

• To meet women beneficiaries who have been connected to SSP- Avendus project and benefitted from the intervention
• To understand the success stories of women entrepreneurs
• Sharing our observations on systems and processes adopted by SSP to the best of our knowledge, to help make them better.

Employee engagement visits were helpful for employee volunteers to get exposure to CSR programs supported by Avendus and sensitized for one of our thrust areas - women's entrepreneurship.

As a part of support to Sports education Avendus in partnerships with NGOs empowers players in table tennis, football and supports athletes including para-athlete to participate in various national and international competitions.

Friendly matches have been organized between these players and Avendus employees to sensitize employees and to engage them with our project beneficiaries.