DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR) has be­come an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant ac­tiv­i­ty to or­gan­i­sa­tions glob­al­ly. It is a grow­ing move­ment that has en­cour­aged or­gan­i­sa­tions to pro­gres­sive­ly recog­nise the ben­e­fits of its CSR pro­grammes to the com­mu­ni­ties in which they op­er­ate. It has be­come a fun­da­men­tal busi­ness prac­tice and has gained in­creas­ing at­ten­tion from its ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team.

But for dif­fer­ent or­gan­i­sa­tions CSR may mean some­thing dif­fer­ent.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er, group mar­ket­ing & com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Re­pub­lic Bank, An­na Maria Gar­cia-Brooks said, "CSR is an in­vest­ment to de­vel­op the skills and ca­pac­i­ty for the peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ties."

She said CSR was not a hand-out but it pro­vid­ed com­mu­ni­ties with the nec­es­sary tools and ex­per­tise to make them be­come bet­ter cit­i­zens and it has helped us grow as a busi­ness. "It is about build­ing and strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ties and giv­ing back." She added that the com­pa­ny viewed its CSR ac­tiv­i­ties as key to form­ing a part­ner­ship with its stake­hold­ers. We have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty that as­sist­ed the com­pa­ny in be­com­ing suc­cess­ful. Our aim there­fore is to help those who can­not help them­selves.

Asked how long the com­pa­ny has been in­volved in CSR, Brooks said: "We have al­ways been in­volved in CSR ac­tiv­i­ties but with a gen­er­al fo­cus. When I joined the com­pa­ny in 1993, it was very ac­tive in the com­mu­ni­ty, how­ev­er, the com­pa­ny had de­cid­ed in 2003 to as­so­ciate a brand to its CSR ini­tia­tives and nar­row the fo­cus, in or­der to make a mean­ing­ful dent in­to so­ci­ety." As a re­sult she added that the com­pa­ny gave birth to the brand The Pow­er to Make a Dif­fer­ence. She said the brand fo­cus­es main­ly on youth de­vel­op­ment in ar­eas such as ed­u­ca­tion, sports and cul­ture. The aim is to em­pow­er those in our com­mu­ni­ty to make a dif­fer­ence and a con­tri­bu­tion to the so­ci­ety.

CSR and Cul­ture

Brooks said their in­volve­ment in cul­ture is to keep it alive and to teach the younger gen­er­a­tion about their his­to­ry. She said there was a dif­fer­ence be­tween spon­sor­ship and in­vest­ment. She said for Car­ni­val, Re­pub­lic Bank in­vests about $1 mil­lion to the Ju­nior Pa­rade of Bands and with this in­vest­ment, work­shops are held to teach the youths how to de­sign cos­tumes and about Car­ni­val pro­duc­tion. "We pro­vide an en­vi­ron­ment for them to be­come in­volve in their own cul­ture and to have an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for its val­ue." Brooks added that the com­pa­ny had re -fo­cused its in­vest­ments in steel­pan by tak­ing a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. She not­ed that the youths must be able to ben­e­fit from the in­vest­ment and so the com­pa­ny de­cid­ed on the ini­tia­tive to as­sist the youths in learn­ing to read mu­sic and play the in­dige­nous in­stru­ment, the pan; hence the idea for the Pan Mi­nors Ini­tia­tive. She said the com­pa­ny al­so make small con­tri­bu­tions to un-spon­sored steel­bands to as­sist them through the sea­son.

CSR ben­e­fits

Brooks said as more cit­i­zens recog­nise the un­der­ly­ing so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with our brand, the com­pa­ny is viewed as a more car­ing com­pa­ny and this is im­por­tant to us. She added that some peo­ple are now hav­ing a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion for it. "Emo­tion dri­ves peo­ple to ac­tion," she said. Brooks fur­ther not­ed that the com­pa­ny was not ex­pect­ing fi­nan­cial re­turns but a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens and an ap­pre­ci­a­tion to be­come more in­de­pen­dent giv­en their lim­i­ta­tions. She said they al­so en­cour­age their em­ploy­ees to get in­volve on a na­tion­al lev­el so in the long term, cus­tomers would make de­ci­sions more than just on a price lev­el but would al­so take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion how the com­pa­ny treats the com­mu­ni­ty and their em­ploy­ees. How­ev­er, once a com­pa­ny broad­ens its per­spec­tive, it be­comes rel­e­vant, she added. "It is about ser­vice and pro­mot­ing and im­prov­ing a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens," Brooks added.

There­fore she said it was not about spon­sor­ship but so­cial in­vest­ments.

Long stand­ing in­volve­ment

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was TSTT's com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Graeme Suite, who said TSTT's in­volve­ment in CSR pre-dates the es­tab­lish­ment of TSTT more than two decades ago. There­fore, re­gard­ing char­i­ta­ble CSR, through the TSTT Foun­da­tion, new ini­tia­tives are con­tin­u­ous­ly be­ing eval­u­at­ed to sup­port NGO's and com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions (CBO's) in­volved in youth de­vel­op­ment in the ar­eas of ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, sport and health. The two main ar­eas of fo­cus, he said, are the com­mer­cial spon­sor­ships which cre­ate mu­tu­al com­mer­cial ob­jec­tives for the par­ties in­volved. He added that there are al­so char­i­ta­ble spon­sor­ships in which the ob­jec­tive is to use re­sources to help build the ca­pac­i­ty of the ben­e­fi­cia­ry to suc­cess­ful­ly car­ry out its man­date. How­ev­er, he said there is on­ly min­i­mal com­mer­cial pay­back for many spon­sor­ships.

De­vel­op­ment of cul­ture

Suite said as the na­tion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion's provider has tak­en a keen in­ter­est in sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of cul­ture as a sus­tain­able en­ter­prise be­cause in the wider scheme of things, if it con­tributes to the econ­o­my then it makes good busi­ness sense for TSTT. But he said, "On the so­cial side, we have al­ways had an in­ter­est in sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of artistes and ath­letes."

How­ev­er, the Car­ni­val en­ter­prise is a ma­jor prov­ing ground for lo­cal tal­ent, so giv­ing sup­port to help de­vel­op skills of artistes has com­ple­ment­ed the com­pa­ny's ob­jec­tive. If we use the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion as an ex­am­ple, Suite said, then the ben­e­fits of such in­vest­ments in­clude en­hanc­ing the mar­ketabil­i­ty of events and sup­port­ing the pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment of en­ter­tain­ers which ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fits the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Suite said the event has greater and greater in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal with all of the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits that goes along with that, not on­ly for TSTT but for many oth­er lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs and sup­pli­ers.

Ben­e­fits and in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal

Suite said the un­de­ni­able re­al­i­ty is that con­ver­gence in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try has blurred the lines dis­tin­guish­ing tele­com, me­dia & en­ter­tain­ment and ad­ver­tise­ment com­pa­nies. This is cur­rent­ly ev­i­denced in TSTT with its new IPTV of­fer­ing, broad­band, se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and Wimax. All over the world lead­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies con­tin­u­ous­ly use blend­ed en­ter­tain­ment and mar­ket­ing strate­gies to reach and keep more cus­tomers. An ex­am­ple of this he said was the Be­y­once con­cert which TSTT Board of Di­rec­tors in­di­cat­ed that the mo­tive for host­ing the show was in­formed by mar­ket­ing strate­gies that have en­abled the com­pa­ny to main­tain a strong growth path over the years. How­ev­er, the wider ben­e­fit of the Be­y­once con­cert is al­so ev­i­denced by the fact that sev­er­al hun­dred tick­et pur­chas­es have tak­en place with over­seas buy­ers who will be com­ing to Trinidad for the con­cert. The con­cert there­fore com­ple­ments T&T's tourism goals.