As a socially responsible corporate, we at Essar have pledged to make a meaningful contribution towards augmenting administrative efforts to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak in India. Through Essar Foundation, our CSR arm, we launched ‘Essar Cares’, an initiative aimed at providing medical supplies and alleviating hunger across a cross section of our nation’s population.
Our focus has been on extending a helping hand to some of the most marginalised communities, as well as to the people working on the frontlines of healthcare and law enforcement during this critical time. In the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, our community outreach efforts have encompassed the following: Essar Meal Project, Essar Health Project, Essar Rainbow Project, Essar Covid-9 Relief Fund and Sahej Project.
Essar Meal Project
Through the Essar Meal Project we have made a commitment to provide 2 million (20 lakh) meals to vulnerable communities of people whose livelihoods have been affected by the pandemic. They include daily wage earners, transgenders, women with a background of domestic violence, slum dwellers, migrant labourers, ragpickers, orphanages and adivasis. Essar Foundation has served more than a million meals already as part of this project, and plans to sustain its efforts as India grapples with the necessary evil of an extended lockdown.
Essar Health Project
The Essar Health Project is targetted towards those individuals who are braving acute risk every day because of their proximity to infected or potentially infected people. These are doctors, nurses, medical staff and sanitation workers, as well as our policemen and CISF personnel tasked with the responsibility of enforcing the lockdown. Essar Foundation has provided 155,000 units of medical supplies (including masks and hand sanitisers), as also over 5,000 PPEs (Personal Protective Equipment) to hospitals, police stations and villages. In a Chennai hospital, we have donated a Walk-in Sample Kiosk (WISK), which facilitates contactless testing.
Essar Rainbow Project & Essar Covid-19 Relief Fund
Through the Essar Rainbow Project, which is focussed on the transgender community and on women with a history of domestic violence, Essar Foundation is distributing sanitary napkins, handwash, antiseptic, soaps and detergent. The Essar Covid-19 Relief Fund, instituted with seed investment from Essar, has reached out to both employees, as well as external donors, who want to make a voluntary contribution towards the relief efforts.
Sahej Project
Essar Foundation recently launched the Sahej app that promotes awareness about menstrual hygiene, and gives access to women from all social classes to affordable menstrual products. It has also distributed over 400,000 sanitary napkins to women in Mumbai slums and the Mumbai Police, in collaboration with BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Commission) and BEST (Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport).
Over the last 50 years, Essar has worked closely with the communities residing in the vicinity of its operations. Since 2011, Essar Foundation has carried on the philanthropic work in a cohesive, programmatic manner. Its activities are inspired by the concept of shared value whereby Essar strives to build an inclusive environment for the communities that it impacts through its business operations in the sectors of Energy, Infrastructure, Metals & Mining, Services, and Technology. Working in collaboration with non-profits and the local administrations, the Foundation today reaches out to 500,000 people across 500 villages in eight Indian states in the areas of Women’s Empowerment, Livelihoods & Entrepreneurship, Education, Environment Conservation, and Healthcare & Sanitation.
It is this people-first philosophy that is fuelling our efforts to address the unprecedented challenges posed by the Coronavirus outbreak. We believe that we can tide over this global crisis by adopting a positive attitude and a collaborative approach.
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