By Dominick Rodrigues
Bengaluru: “While women make a huge contribution towards economic development globally and within India, the Covid-19 pandemic has hit women hard as many work in the unprotected, informal sector where job losses have been significant around the world. As transport systems stop, women are unable to access essential services such as maternal health services,” according to Susan Ferguson – UN Women Representative for India.
“Globally, domestic violence has surged, giving rise to the ‘shadow pandemic’ and we need to fund policies and actions to end this shadow pandemic once and for all. In India, there are a plethora of innovative examples of preventing and responding to gender based violence,” she said while lauding the Karma Summit as a welcome initiative to spread the work already happening and learning from each other about what helps women live lives free of violence.
Ferguson was speaking at the two-day virtual edition of the Karma Summit themed ‘’Co-creating a New Normal”, hosted by CSR platform Goodera here recently. The summit drew participation of over 1150 participants including global visionaries, CXO’s and eminent media personalities from the CSR and volunteering community across India.
Highlighting the situation of migrant workers who are unable to find work in their villages or resume their work in the cities, Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi — in his keynote address – described the challenges such as vulnerability to exploitation faced by the children of many migrant workers who have lost their livelihoods.
The Summit, which featured over 50 renowned speakers and jury members across the pharma, tech, auto, non-profit and health sectors, focused on key cross-cutting issues pertinent to the CSR community. The sessions included engaging and insightful conversations on topics such as changing boardroom discussions around CSR, risk management for resilient CSR programs, interdependent partnerships for inclusive impact and the crucial role of employees who are volunteering to drive action.
The participants facilitated a dialogue on ways to rebuild CSR strategies that will make the world a better place as it adapts to a new normal post the COVID-19 pandemic. Corporates, nonprofits and HR professionals shared new ways to motivate employers to generate meaningful employee engagement and resources for COVID relief. The summit also helped assess the expected impact of the pandemic on our ability to move towards the SDGs 2030.
“This summit brought under one roof some very critical conversations that impact how companies visualize and implement CSR and Volunteering initiatives for 2020 and beyond. From our panelists and speakers, we learnt how technology and practical solutions such as multi-stakeholder partnerships could transform a region impacted deeply by the pandemic, and help communities to quickly spring back to their feet,” Abhishek Humbad, Founder & CEO, Goodera, said while thanking the summit participants for sharing their invaluable insights that would go a long way in helping the world to successfully embrace doing good in the new normal.
The 2-day summit concluded with the Karma Awards that facilitated individuals and organizations, who made meaningful social contributions to communities during the pandemic. The jury members included established and distinguished leaders in the CSR & Volunteering sectors of India.
