For the fi­nan­cial pe­ri­od from April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024, the Dig­i­cel Group in­vest­ed US$7.4 mil­lion in en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance (ESG) projects in T&T.

This amount­ed to the Dig­i­cel team sup­port­ing 604 projects and fa­cil­i­tat­ing 150 EPIC (ex­tra­or­di­nary projects im­pact­ing com­mu­ni­ties) grants, the es­tab­lish­ment of 10 in­no­va­tion labs as well as 162 tech­nol­o­gy in ed­u­ca­tion cen­tres (TIE) and in the process im­pact­ing over 200,000 peo­ple. Dig­i­cel’s in­vest­ment in ESG was far larg­er in Ja­maica and Haiti.

Haiti re­ceived the largest sup­port from the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider, as the com­pa­ny in­vest­ed US$87.1 mil­lion in­to the coun­try which spent much of the year trou­bled by po­lit­i­cal tur­moil and gang vi­o­lence.

Dig­i­cel said 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple di­rect­ly ben­e­fit­ted from its projects in Haiti, with 363 com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment projects re­ceiv­ing fund­ing from the com­pa­ny. The re­port stat­ed that 60,000 stu­dents ben­e­fit­ed from 193 school con­struc­tion projects, which re­ceived Dig­i­cel fund­ing.

No­tably, the re­port high­light­ed Dig­i­cel’s ef­forts to in­tro­duce ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial ser­vices to the coun­try via its Mon­Cash ser­vice.

“In Haiti, ac­cess to fi­nan­cial ser­vices is re­served for a very small pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion but dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial ser­vices are cre­at­ing a path to in­creased fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and re­al-world ben­e­fits for low-in­come peo­ple all across the coun­try.

“Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank of Haiti, 89 per cent of Hait­ian adults are un­banked, while the World Bank re­ports that more than 5 mil­lion Haitians live on less than US$3.65 per day. For con­text, these fig­ures are among the low­est not on­ly in the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion, but glob­al­ly,” ac­cord­ing to Dig­i­cel’s 2024 ESG re­port.

The re­port added, “Our Mon­Cash mo­bile mon­ey ser­vice has been grow­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly in the last few years and we con­tin­ue to in­vest to meet our cus­tomer’s needs. That saw the team suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete a plat­form mi­gra­tion in Au­gust 2023 to up­grade the ser­vice, mean­ing we can now of­fer en­hanced fea­tures. Some of these changes like the ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures have led to a sig­nif­i­cant drop in fraud-re­lat­ed calls de­liv­er­ing bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty, bet­ter ser­vice and a bet­ter user ex­pe­ri­ence.”

The com­pa­ny said the ser­vice had proven help­ful amid the tur­moil in the coun­try.

The ESG re­port said, “We are al­so along­side our com­mu­ni­ty when dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions arise. With the civ­il sit­u­a­tion in Haiti con­tin­u­ing to be prob­lem­at­ic, Mon­Cash cus­tomers have the abil­i­ty to re­ceive in­ter­na­tion­al re­mit­tances which can help peo­ple sur­vive the day to day. We’ve seen our trans­ac­tion val­ue grow by an amaz­ing 417 per cent as cus­tomers re­spond­ed to the con­ve­nience and se­cu­ri­ty that Mon­Cash of­fers at a time when Haitians are most in need. As we con­tin­ue to ed­u­cate our cus­tomers on the ben­e­fits, we’ve al­so been able to build our mer­chant net­work from 1,200 to 3,000 ac­tive re­tail­ers.”

Dig­i­cel had at­tempt­ed to in­tro­duce a sim­i­lar ser­vice to T&T, as it had ob­tained a pro­vi­sion­al li­cence in Oc­to­ber 2023 to pro­vide e-mon­ey in T&T. The li­cence was ex­tend­ed in April but by Au­gust 2024, the com­pa­ny said it had vol­un­tar­i­ly sur­ren­dered the li­cence, days af­ter the Cen­tral Bank an­nounced it had been re­voked.

Ja­maica, on the oth­er hand, re­ceived an ESG in­vest­ment of $46.67 mil­lion. That sum fa­cil­i­tat­ed the ren­o­va­tion or con­struc­tion of 29 spe­cial needs cen­tres, schools and ear­ly child­hood in­sti­tu­tions, the es­tab­lish­ment of 231 pri­ma­ry school en­rich­ment rooms for lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of 1,413 tablets as well as the do­na­tion of 107 Braille ma­chines to The Sal­va­tion Army School For The Blind.

Dig­i­cel said over 250,000 peo­ple ben­e­fit­ted from 888 com­mu­ni­ty grants it of­fered in Ja­maica.

De­spite in­vest­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly less in ESG in T&T than in Haiti or Ja­maica, the com­pa­ny still pro­vid­ed sig­nif­i­cant sup­port for peo­ple in this coun­try.

“To com­mem­o­rate World Steel Pan Day, we part­nered with Pan Trin­ba­go to fund and sup­port de­vel­op­ment of TIEs at eight pan yards in T&T. Each cen­tre has five com­put­ers, a print­er, desks, chairs and one year’s free high-speed broad­band. Each TIE cen­tre has the po­ten­tial to im­pact 3,013 per­sons.”

Dig­i­cel stat­ed it has pushed busi­ness de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try via train­ing pro­grammes it had done through Dig­i­cel Busi­ness and a part­ner­ship with Re­store a Sense of I Can (RSC).

“We sup­port­ed the DigiKids Tech In­cu­ba­tor. The free hy­brid tech­nol­o­gy va­ca­tion camp for ages 8 to 12 em­pow­ers young peo­ple to be­come dig­i­tal cre­ators. Campers learned about sim­u­la­tions, dance code, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, web de­vel­op­ment, au­dio edit­ing and video edit­ing. On-site ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ed web­site de­sign, dance code, ro­bot­ics, aug­ment­ed re­al­i­ty and vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty,” said the com­pa­ny’s ESG re­port.

An­oth­er part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, led to the com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing fund­ing to pro­cure phys­i­cal ther­a­py equip­ment, oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py equip­ment, be­hav­iour­al ther­a­py equip­ment, speech ther­a­py re­sources, as well as re­sources for an adult ther­a­py gym and pae­di­atric ther­a­py gym, fur­ni­ture for an adult dai­ly liv­ing suite, and com­put­er equip­ment and ac­ces­sories for an NGO Re­source Room at the Na­tion­al Ther­a­peu­tic and Re­source Cen­tre (NTRC).

“The NTRC is a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary re­source cen­tre which of­fers ther­a­py and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.

To com­mem­o­rate World Lit­er­a­cy Day and the open­ing of a new play park in the city of Port-of-Spain, team Dig­i­cel read aloud to stu­dents while do­ing craft­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. This year, five teams col­lab­o­rat­ed to share Christ­mas cheer dur­ing the yule­tide sea­son.

“The in­vest­ment cov­ered costs to pur­chase de­vices for chil­dren liv­ing in or­phan­ages, ap­pli­ances and per­son­al care prod­ucts for a se­nior cit­i­zens’ home, food ham­pers for vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies and a play park for chil­dren in ear­ly child­hood care,” said Dig­i­cel.

The com­pa­ny how­ev­er not­ed that cli­mate change re­mained a chal­lenge that need­ed to be ad­dressed in the re­gion.

The re­port high­light­ed its own goals and plans to aid with the is­sue.

The re­port said, “Cli­mate-re­lat­ed risks are twofold; en­com­pass­ing tran­si­tion risks stem­ming from po­ten­tial mar­ket and pol­i­cy shifts as the glob­al econ­o­my tran­si­tions to­wards low car­bon so­lu­tions and phys­i­cal risks such as ex­treme weath­er events and long-term cli­mat­ic changes.

“As such, we have put in place some am­bi­tions for our­selves. We are com­mit­ted to re­duc­ing our scope one and two emis­sions and to un­der­stand­ing how we can bet­ter as­sist with re­duc­ing our scope three emis­sions over the short to medi­um to long-term.

“By 2035, we hope to re­duce our scope one and two emis­sions by 50 per cent, with the am­bi­tion of be­ing net ze­ro by 2050.”