Nashik, the fourth largest city in the state of Maharashtra, is situated on the bank of river Godavari. The city is an important cultural, IT, industrial and agriculture centre in Maharashtra, making it an important centre for CSR investments.
Nashik district received Rs. 70.04 Cr. in CSR funds in FY 2020-21 from 173 companies. The top three contributors in Nashik include Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Ashoka Buildcon Limited, and Pernod Ricard India Private Limited, which spent Rs. 11.34 Cr., Rs. 8.55 Cr., and Rs. 4.98 Cr. respectively through CSR. The top three areas of focus of CSR initiatives in the district were Education, Health, and Rural Development.
Top Companies for CSR in Nashik
GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals Limited
GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals Limited (GSK) worked with its CSR Partner, Habitat for Humanity India Trust, to promote sanitation in schools. The project covered the construction/repair of sanitation units and also focused on sensitising the children, teaching and non-teaching staff towards basic health and hygiene practices.
The project, which will benefit over 10,000 students, is an integral part of GSK India’s commitment to promote preventive healthcare in communities. A positive change in hygiene practices, combined with facility construction, will help the children as they use the facilities and will also sensitise their families about the benefits of closed sanitation units.
The school authorities have committed to supervise the project under the guidance of the implementing partner to ensure that the children continue to benefit from improved sanitation.
Sanitation units have been constructed/repaired in the following five partly government aided schools in Nashik:
M.R. Sarda Kanya Vidya Mandir
CDO Meri High School
Sagarmal Modi Prathmik Shikshan Mandir
Ashram Shala Velunje – Primary School
Ashram Shala Velunje- Secondary School
Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd
Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd, (BFIL) a subsidiary of IndusInd Bank has signed an MoU with The Animal Husbandry Department (AHD) of the Maharashtra Government to begin its Social Impact Initiative “Bharat Sanjeevani” at 31 districts in the state, including Nashik.
The collaboration titled “Mahapashudhan Sanjeevani” under “Mukhyamantri Pashu Swasthya Yojana” is aimed at enhancing the doorstep delivery of livestock care, making all veterinary services available for farmers at just a phone call away. The toll-free 1962 will be operational from early next year.
The joint initiative ensures that livestock is provided quality treatment in a time-bound manner, and the farmer is saved of additional expenses like traveling to the point of care and availing quality medicines. The toll-free 1962 has been operational from January 2021. Maharashtra has a total cattle population of 1.96 Cr.
The doorstep veterinary services will have curative treatment, vaccination, artificial insemination, preventive care and all animal husbandry related information. In the initiative, the field veterinary services of the Department will be deployed through an integrated telemedicine and service management platform developed by BFIL.
The uniqueness of the initiative lies in its’ ability to connect the doctor and the farmer through a mobile app, which also tracks the efficiency of service delivery, medicines prescribed, and livestock diseases related data in one platform. The one-of-its-kind telemedicine platform developed by BFIL ensures that the farmer avails quality treatment at the doorstep in a time-bound manner.
Indigo Airlines
Indigo Airlines, through its CSR initiative, has enabled thousands of rural women in Maharashtra to write their own destiny. The CSR programme is helping 20 thousand women in rural pockets of four districts – Pune, Ahmednagar, Nashik and Thane, live with dignity. The Airline through its implementation partner is skilling, financing and guiding these women to run their enterprises successfully.
The target beneficiaries of the CSR programme are families with no male earning member. Women with distress have been given priority. Many of these women now earn more than Rs 8,000 per month.
IndiGo’s role is to provide assets for potential enterprise development, advocacy and institutional linkages. The project is focused on capacity building, development through on-farm & off-farm activities, collection, processing and marketing of the farm produce. The programme is spearheaded by AFARM, an association of NGOs working on sustainable agriculture and livelihood in Maharashtra.
In the first stage, awareness programmes in villages and household survey were organised. Women were screened based on a set selection criteria namely SC, ST, OBC and other category Households, BPL & Landless, marginal landholder. But the priority was given to women in distress such as widows, single and divorced ones.
Women were identified with skills and then trained by AFARM. Upskilling was done in Dairy, Gotary, Poultry based livelihoods other than sustainable agriculture and also business planning, enterprise management, negotiations and marketing. The women have also been trained on Digital Financial Literacy, and how to access various government schemes for livelihoods.
The programme has an embedded credit mechanism where each producer group gets 7500 rupees in the bank account. The PG decides on whom to give credit to after assessing priority. Each member of PG also deposits a certain amount ranging from 100 rupees to 500 rupees per month (based on collecting decision taken at a periodic meeting).
The project has witnessed an increase in average gross annual household income by 1 lakh and 50 thousand rupees in just 18 months. As a result, distress migration of the women households has decreased by 90 per cent. With the help of CRPs, these women are not only aware of their entitlements and services available from State and Central Government, but almost all of them are availing these services.
