Mumbai, India -- (SBWIRE) -- 07/22/2015 -- International Institute of Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility (IICSR) and IES Management College and Research Centre (IES MCRC) had jointly organized a Roundtable to discuss the need and Importance of education in India on CSR and skill sets required in trained CSR professionals by Organizations mandated to set up CSR departments. IICSR and IES MCRC also announced the launch of a one of its kind 3 month weekend joint Certificate program to be offered at the IES campus in Bandra from September 19, 2015.

The roundtable was inaugurated by the respected Dr. Michael Hopkins, Founder, CSR and Finance Institute, via Video Conferencing on need for CSR to grow in India. He talked about how there is a pressing need for a well organized training centre in India which imparts knowledge and skill to Indian CSR professionals. Ms.Harsha Mukherjee, Founder and Drector, IICSR convened the proceedings and Mr. Satish Jha, Founder and principal, Ashcroft, Sullivan and Jha, moderated the roundtable by asking probing questions.

Mr. Arvind Gupta, CSR Head, SBI talked about how SBI focuses on Employee volunteering and NGOs for implementation to implement their CSR focus on Financial Inclusion.

Mr. Vivek Talwar, Chief Culture Officer, Tata Power talked about the holistic approach followed at Tata group using techniques like Rural appraisal by working with partners who bring synergy to help with communities in their areas of strength and create self sustenance and self reliance.

Mr. Ram Deshpande, Trust Sec, L & T Public Charitable trust, stressed the need to look for professionals having People skills, who understand stakeholders and are able to assess a good project, planning it, know methodologies to evaluate NGOs and monitor their activities, assess impact of efforts, assess performance audits, effective utilization of resources and communicate (messages transmitted and assess messages received) Community interactions and look at completion of project till the date of withdrawal from the project etc as the skills that they seek in their trained CSR professionals.

Mr. Deepak Arora, CEO, Essar Foundation spoke about how its most critical to engage with internal stakeholders and get their buy-in and described his 180 people multi-skilled team drawn from strategy, finance and communication backgrounds who can use complex matrices to identify issues, scholarships, and health areas to impact on and who can, not just deliver but also monitor the projects undertaken as the skills they seek with the senior project management people, who are , Thematic experts having worked on Livelihood and Entrepreneurship aspects and drawn from Developmental sector.

Ms. Anagha Mahajani, GM, Ambuja Foundation, spoke about her 450 member In-house foundation which directly connects with the people with 150 core technical people who are process respecting and people focused having the ability to listen, negotiate and understand the 25 year old Ambuja company and Founders philosophy of being the neighbor of choice of the community and has become the 1st Cement company in India to become water positive.

Mr. Venkat Rolla, CSR Head, Omkar Realty reflected on the lack of expertise and knowledge space in the Corporate sector and Small budgets and lack of trained manpower restricting the growth of CSR in India and hence called upon other companies having small CSR budgets to collaborate to work on common domains like education, health etc to achieve meaningful CSR projects. He talked of how Omkar Builders have resettled slum dwellers using a win – win beneficiaries model in large towers and are currently working on the creating livelihood opportunities of these resettled communities by mapping through need assessment while collaborating with leading cement, bank and a construction companies.

Eric Hensel, Co-Founder Sustainable Square, UAE stressed the need that India needs to have CSR practitioners who have the Practice, degree, experience and background of CSRR equipped with Inter-personal skills and partnering skills. He elaborated by saying how Younger people who are passionate with Social, Environmental and other technical backgrounds bring tangible deliverables and can create a technical proposal it is the Motivation and Attitude which are the soft skills that are also a pre requisite skill in a CSR practitioner. He believes that best CSR practitioners are those who have a demonstrated track record in any field, equipped with technical skills, passionate for CSR or Sustainability with some tangible experience and may have specialization in any subject, be it Finance, HR, marketing etc who are able to apply basic education into solutions of the business in the area od sustainability and CSR, say a person trained in mathematics or statistics could use the skill to measure impact of CSR programs.

Mr. Vijay Kapur and Dr. Enakshi Sengupta, Professors at American University of Central Asia, shared how the government of India needs to define CSR in India and thereby help define the scope of CSR as being responsible business oriented or as being a tool to enhance Social impact. Professor Kapoor talked about the need of CSR professionals to have the requisite Knowledge on the subject of CSR while having good Communication skills.

Mr. Brahma Prakash Tripathi, COO, IICSR, proposed a vote of thanks and announced the launch of the short term 3 month weekend joint Certificate program to be offered at the IES campus in Bandra in September 2015 by IICSR and IES, and that it was already receiving applications from the same. He assured the audience that course curriculum was drawn after detailed discussions with CSR practitioners and that the objective of the program was to introduce to working professionals basics about CSR and Sustainability as a concept and give them insights to enable them to develop CSR and Sustainability Vertical of their employer. He explained how by using case studies and trained on skills how to develop, implement, measure and report a CSR Project, the batch size of 30 students would be able to contribute to their employer and encouraged the Human resources departments of corporations to send more than one participant from their CSR team to give them meaningful skills which they can implement in their company as a team. The panel speakers assured their support to work closely with IICSR which offers this unique certificate program in CSR in India by co-creating the content for the program and also be the guest speakers for the certificate program in creating trained CSR professionals in India.

For more updates log on to http://iicsr.com

Contact Details :
Name: Harsha Mukherjee
Organization : International Institute of Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility
Organization Location: Mumbai
mail: harsha@iicsr.com
Phone: +91-22-2288-5497
Website: http://iicsr.com/