With yet another year of delivering its purpose of helping underprivileged children in India access their right to education, P&G India closed its signature CSR program Shiksha 2010-11 with its largest ever impact of reaching 280,000 children. In association with partner NGO’s Round Table India (RTI), Child Rights and You (CRY), Army Wives Welfare Association (AWWA), Save the Children (STC) amongst others, Shiksha now covers the length and breadth of India by helping build, support and reactivate over 140 schools till date.
P&G’s flagship CSR program Shiksha strengthened its vision of creating tangible impact “Brick by Brick” through the building of 20 ‘Shiksha schools’ with plans to build another 20 schools in 2012. This impact is almost a 100% increase from the previous year, wherein over 150,000 children were educated via Shiksha.
Our key NGO partner Round Table India, spearheaded the identification, establishment, completion and maintenance of RTI Shiksha School projects across the country bringing onboard expertise in building schools as well as contribution towards funds. This partnership has helped bring our vision of building schools “Brick by Brick” to life with 19 projects built this year and 20 more in the coming year. We thank RTI for their support to Shiksha helping impact a larger number of children this year.
Shiksha has also helped to reactivate over 100 schools via CRY, its long term NGO partner working towards education via policy and community level interventions for sustainable development. NGOs AWWA & NWWA Sankalp school serve the needs of differently-abled children from Army & Navy families and local NGOs where P&G plants are present focusing on community development.
In addition to its existing partners, P&G has also associated with the NGO ‘Save the Children,’ the world’s leading organization that works to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children to achieve immediate and long-lasting changes in their lives. Through Shiksha, P&G reaches out to 12 Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidhyalays in Rajasthan & Jharkhand to impact the lives of 3800 + underprivileged girls in these regions.
This year, Shiksha has gone one step further and has extended support to the AWWA run LADAKH SCOUTS CHILDREN SCHOOL. The school faced several challenges like irregular power supply, shortage of school buses and lack of basic infrastructure facilities. The contribution made to AWWA will help better the existing condition of the school to provide a more wholesome learning environment for the children.
Shiksha has over the years received generous support from many thought leaders & celebrities such as Anupam Kher, Dr. Kiran Bedi, Rani Mukherjee, Sushmita Sen, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, Sharmila Tagore, Konkona Sen, Neha Dhupia, Tisca Chopra, Tabu, Soha Ali Khan, Lara Dutta, Preity Zinta, Dia Mirza, Celina Jaitley, Esha Deol, Jacqueline Fernandez, Jatin Das, Shaan and many more. P&G’s multiple stakeholder approach involving employees, trade & retailers, media and consumers has resulted in Shiksha becoming a national consumer movement.
Speaking at the event, Shweta Shukla, Associate Director & Head - External Relations, Procter & Gamble India said, “Our vision of purpose-inspired growth continues to drive us to touch and improve more lives, everyday. Shiksha has grown from strength to strength over the past years. Today, Shiksha is a national consumer movement with a strengthened vision of building schools to give more and more children the invaluable gift of education. This has been our most successful year till date nearly doubling the impact with 20 + schools built across the country. With each passing year, we aim to further strengthen this vision by continuing to build more schools thus enabling more underprivileged children access their right to education”.
Shiksha is an integral part of P&G's global philanthropy program - Live, Learn & Thrive, currently reaching over 50 million children. In the last 7 years of the Shiksha program, P&G has made a cumulative donation of over Rs 22 crores to the cause of providing children the invaluable gift of education and enabling them to access this basic right.
With its motto of ‘Padhega India Toh Badhega India’ Shiksha believes that the secret to a brighter India lies in children attaining their right to a good quality education. Shiksha empowers consumers to lead social change in the area of education for children via a simple purchase of any of P&G’s large packs of Tide, Ariel, Pantene, Olay, H&S, Rejoice, Vicks VapoRub, Whisper, Gillette Mach 3 Turbo, Gillette Series, Oral B, Duracell or Pampers during the months of April, May & June. Irrespective of sales, every year P&G commits to a minimum donation of Rs. 1 cr.
About Shiksha
Shiksha is an integral part of P&G's global philanthropy program - Live, Learn & Thrive - focused on the development of children in need across the globe, currently reaching over 50 million children. Launched in 2005, Shiksha has grown immensely and is today a National Consumer Movement with strong support from consumers. This year, P&G, through Shiksha will build more than 20 schools across the nation to give more children the invaluable gift of education with a focus to build more schools in the years to come.
