By Abigail Ho-Torres
GONE are the days when businesses existed solely for profit. Sustainability has crossed over from being a buzzword to a way of life, and many companies have started using the triple bottom line framework to measure success.
The triple bottom line, a term coined some 25 years ago, expands the traditional accounting framework to include not only financial performance, but also social and environmental impact. These three bottom lines are usually captured in simpler terms: people, planet and profit.
This being the case, the spotlight shines brighter than ever on corporate social responsibility. Some countries even mandate CSR activities, like India, while some, like Denmark, require a disclosure of CSR policies and practices.
Nowadays, any act of giving, including straight-up philanthropy, can be labeled “CSR.” But for CSR programs to be truly sustainable, they must be part of a company’s value chain—seamlessly integrated with business strategy.
How can this be done? It has to start from the top. Management must make a conscious decision to implement programs that will not only positively impact an organization’s income statement, but also generate societal and ecological gains.
Access to water
To illustrate this point, I’ll cite the case of my own organization, Maynilad Water Services Inc. The water concessionaire has a number of CSR initiatives, all anchored on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation.
One of these initiatives is the provision of water access to blighted communities. For context: one cannot get a water service connection unless one can provide a proof of ownership, which informal settlers obviously do not have. This is not to condone illegal settlements, mind you. This is about providing a source of safe and affordable water to people already down on their luck.
These initiatives, dubbed Samahang Tubig Maynilad (STM) and Pag-Asa sa Patubig Partnerships (P3), give the company an opportunity to help those in need, while turning the beneficiaries into Maynilad customers. Beneficiaries, through organized homeowners associations, manage their own water systems, enjoying a subsidized tariff from Maynilad.
Instead of beneficiary communities getting water rations at high rates from who-knows-where, they have ready access to affordable and safe water at around a third of the price. Earnings go to the association, and are plowed back into the community through various projects of their choice.
To date, STM and P3’s community water systems benefit close to 4,000 households all over Maynilad’s concession area. These CSR initiatives have also garnered a number of local and international awards, the most recent among them a Gold Award from the 10th Global CSR Awards in 2018 for Best Community Program.
Social enterprises
Some STM communities have even set up social enterprises to augment earnings from their community water systems. The first of its kind is Kapwa Producers Cooperative, a Tondo community that produces toiletries and home care essentials, such as soaps, shampoo, fabric conditioner and dishwashing liquid.
Led by Lydia Codiñera, a retired teacher, Kapwa has grown from a backyard enterprise that sold their products solely to Maynilad, to a steadily expanding business that has bagged a supply contract with a community grocery chain and has even secured a small-scale distribution deal with a group in Saipan.
Since the creation of the group around eight years ago, Kapwa as a group and Aling Lydia as an individual have been recognized by a number of award-giving bodies, the most recent of which is the Go Negosyo Inspiring Filipina award for Aling Lydia’s leadership of STM Tondo.
Another community that is following Kapwa’s footsteps is STM Riverview in Quezon City. Some women in that community are part of Maynilad’s Green Badge program, which retrieves old uniforms from employees, de-brands and repurposes these, and distributes the de-branded and rebadged old uniforms to disaster survivors.
Its objectives are multipronged: to prevent Maynilad uniforms from being used in unscrupulous activities, thus protecting the company’s brand and reputation; to provide decent clothing to disaster survivors; to give employees a chance to help others; and to provide livelihood opportunities to Maynilad communities.
Since its launch in 2017, the Green Badge program has collected and repurposed more than 7,600 pieces of uniforms, 6,200 pieces of which have been donated to Marawi siege survivors and victims of fires in 16 cities. Some of the old uniforms have also been transformed into sling bags, which Maynilad’s capacity-building arm Maynilad Water Academy have given to high-school students participating in its Junior Water Camp. The community now also produces some of Maynilad’s corporate giveaways.
The program currently has a core team of 22, which include seamstresses, washers, and sorters and packers—all of them women who did not use to have any source of income. Each of them now earn between P1,800 and P3,500 monthly for their work.
Apart from old Maynilad uniforms, the Green Badge community is now in the process of prototyping products made of old tarpaulin banners, to help Maynilad sustainably dispose of some of its waste materials. All cloth scraps from uniform repurposing, on the other hand, are turned into rags.
Both Green Badge and Kapwa were bestowed a Platinum Award for Best Community Programs at the 11th Global CSR Awards earlier this year, as part of Maynilad’s Water-centric Social Enterprise Programs. Green Badge also received a Gold Stevie Award for Innovation in Energy and Sustainability at the recent 2019 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards.
The strategic connection
So how do all these CSR programs figure in Maynilad’s corporate strategies? STM and P3 make customers out of communities that would never have been able to get water service connections, and could potentially be a hotbed for illegal connections. These, plus Maynilad’s social enterprises, also tie neatly with the company’s Love for Country core value, reinforcing its commitment to be a partner in nation-building.
Through these programs, the company lives up to its brand promise by helping uplift the lives of the very people it serves, who, in turn, contribute to the growth of the business. This is how Maynilad walks the talk, living up to its tagline: higit sa tubig ang aming serbisyo.
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the United Kingdom-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier association for senior professionals around the world. Abigail Ho-Torres is the AVP and head of Advocacy and Marketing of Maynilad Water Services Inc. She spent more than a decade as a business journalist before making the leap to the corporate world.
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