Mini Case Study 1: The BHARTI Story

The Bharti Foundation initiated the process of formalizing and structuring CSR programs fairly early in
the Bharti Group. In 2007, a CSR Council was set up comprising the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs)
of all Bharti Group companies. CSR strategy was driven from the top with full engagement from the
operational level.

The CSR council met twice a year to assess progress and give direction to new CSR initiatives. CSR
strategy was aligned at the senior-most level with high quality information streams from the grassroots.
The CSR council was

Supported by the CSR working group, which connected every quarter and consisted of the CSR
operational leads. Their work was spread in their operational zones and each of them reported to the
council on preset Key
Performing Indicators (KPIs).

Most of these projects were in the education arena as the leaders of the Bharti group believed strongly in
the transformative impact of school education. Processes of grant proposals, evaluation, partnerships
with NGOs and impact measurement were formalized. Employee visits and volunteering programs were
designed around these.
Bharti Foundation was set up in 2000 as the philanthropic arm of Bharti Enterprises to lead its
development projects in a strategic manner.

Its flagship initiative is the Satya Bharti Schools program where they run absolutely free schools for the
underprivileged children in the rural India, with a special focus on the girl child. These schools have
been built by the Foundation on the land given by the community and are operated with full
management control, which includes recruiting teachers, training, creating school processes, teaching,
learning material etc. The funds for all the projects of the Foundation come from the promoters, CSR of
the group companies, employee contributions as well as other corporate donors. The Foundation follows
all the governance processes of the Bharti group. It undertakes annual operational plan, budgeting,
regular reviews, internal and external audits etc.

The size of the Bharti Group as well as the commitment of the promoters towards giving back to the
community led to the creation of the Bharti Foundation, and strong CSR blueprint at the group
companies level. CSR projects and Bharti Foundation’s work is a critical part of Employee induction at
Bharti. In addition, companies like Airtel, Infratel have program for their ‘Young Leaders,’ where they
spend 2/3 weeks working in the Satya Bharti School Program (the flagship rural education initiative of
Bharti Foundation aimed at holistic development of children) in rural areas, during their induction
period. Most employees engage with the CSR projects, but about a third are involved on a regular basis
by ways of donating or volunteering.

Discussion ?

Why targeting education sector only ?

Scale?
Government?
T&D of employees was missing
Right person with right fit.
Just for sake of it.

Effective Date: 1 June 2019 Version: 1 Subject code – BHM 1141

Review Date: 1 June 2020 Reviewed by: Sanchita Tuli Type of document: PMGR
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Mini Case Study 2: E-ValDesign

E-ValDesign, a small boutique impact evaluation firm that specializes in education, speaks of their
projects across states, as a journey with no scaffolding.

When they started as a firm, there were few organizations that specialized in evaluating project data to
provide evidence to determine the impact of their investment. Traditionally, interventions in the CSR
space were evaluated by their inputs and EValDesign was one of the first of the new breed of firms that
sought data to help NGOs understand their own interventions.

EvalDesign discovered that implementation organizations needed feedback in their work, and this deep
conviction, based on years of work in the education sector in other organizations drove them to offer
these services. They have continued to receive work through word-of-mouth and now can boast of an
impressive client portfolio that is testament to their work. And to the steady maturity in the market, that
is willing to invest in understanding their own data. They work as knowledge partners with clients to
unearth the untold story of the educator’s work in the field.

The founder, Akanksha Bapna tells the story of a client that had gathered wonderful data on their work,
but had not mulched through it to understand the implications. Once presented to them in a visual
manner, they changed their entire approach to early year’s skill delivery and redesigned their program.
Older, more established CSR funds find it difficult to change their ways, but they too work with
EvalDesign or their competitors in improving accountability for the CSR funds.

The education sector in the CSR space is often unaware of how valuable their data is and is willing to
learn from a better analysis of their own past practice. This can only augur well for the future of CSR in
education

Effective Date: 1 June 2019 Version: 1 Subject code – BHM 1141

Review Date: 1 June 2020 Reviewed by: Sanchita Tuli Type of document: PMGR
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Mini Case Study 3: Experience of ‘Thousand School Project’

Tata steel, who conceptualized and funded this project since 2014 to provide school level intervention,
covering almost 1000 government primary schools in 115 Gram Panchayats (GPs; local self-
government organization in India of the Panchayati Raj system at the village or small town level) in six
blocks (the second tier of the three tier Panchayati Raj administrative system in India) of Odisha, had
been deliberating, for almost a year, with eminent academicians, researchers, civil society people,
educationist and bureaucrats to decide whether to go with such project which requires work with
government school system or to have a separate education establishment.

As Tata Steel’s planned commitment for spending on education in Odisha for next 5 year was
substantial, Tata Steel Board approved a proposal of an NGO (ASPIRE) for this task for the first year,
allocating funds for the budgeted activities. For second year (2015–2016), the company gave approval
to spend almost INR 100 million (approximately 1.3 million Euros @ 1 INR¼0.013 Euros; as on
February 12, 2016) by expanding the intervention in all GPs which was completely unexpected by the
implementing partner.

Effective Date: 1 June 2019 Version: 1 Subject code – BHM 1141

Review Date: 1 June 2020 Reviewed by: Sanchita Tuli Type of document: PMGR
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Mini Case Study 4: EZ Vidya

At EZ Vidya, our experience of working with CSR in Education, started more than a decade ago. Our
very first association, for which we remain eternally grateful, is one with Wipro Applying Thought in
Schools (WATIS).
In many ways, this is quite atypical, as the WATIS team would most likely not want to categorise their
work as ‘CSR’ but part of their ‘core responsibility’.

Indeed, WATIS began work when CSR was hardly a mandate! What started as a chance association, has
evolved, over time with WATIS itself, involving deeper projects in school education. Alongside, the
partnership lent credibility in our growing years and gave us opportunities to work with many other
organizations, both corporate bodies as well as NGOs and Foundation. Nokia, IBM, Dell Computers,
Azim Premji Foundation, American India Foundation, The British Council and Microsoft are some of
the organizations that we have worked with over the years.

The wide variety of organizations added to the rich experience gained through a variety of work. Over
time, EZ Vidya has been established as a credible enabler of ‘CSR in Education’ space.

In the initial years, many a school would wonder why teachers needed ‘development programmes’ when
we approached them. Akin to this, most organizations would focus on ‘grants’ towards better
infrastructure like
benches, fans and so on. Over time, it moved to including technology in schools. We would often find
ourselves wondering if these alone were sufficient. One of the aspects we notice is that over time the
number of organizations working on enhancing learning outcomes, assessment, quality of learning and
so on, has grown alongside the ones working on infrastructure. One of the things this could be attributed
to, is perhaps the CSR mandate.

Alongside this interest in the qualitative aspects, we also see an attempt to ‘measure’ results that may be
relatively more intangible. With this come requests for deeper engagements to assess programmes from
a learning outcome perspective. We think that the CSR mandate may be one of the factors in linking the
funding more closely to the impact measurements. One of the areas where work needs to be done is for
groups to come together to jointly enable CSR. While this may no doubt have some impact on the
funding side, it could also streamline organizations working in this space to minimize duplication of
efforts and maximize impacts.

Moving forward, we certainly see this space growing given the CSR mandates. It will be interesting to
see how consolidation, if at all, happens in this space and how organizations collaborate.

Effective Date: 1 June 2019 Version: 1 Subject code – BHM 1141

Review Date: 1 June 2020 Reviewed by: Sanchita Tuli Type of document: PMGR
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