UST Recognized for CSR Excellence by the 2022 Mahatma Awards

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
UST, a leading digital transformation solutions company, has won the ‘Mahatma Awards 2022’ for CSR Excellence in the ‘Community Initiative’ category. Mahatma Awards were founded and instituted by social entrepreneur and philanthropist Amit Sachdeva, better known as ‘The CSR Man of India’ and are supported by Aditya Birla Group. Smita Sharma, Global Program Manager – CSR and Sustainability, UST, and Rajan Aggarwal, CSR Ambassador at Noida Center received the award for UST at the award ceremony on the eve of the birth anniversary of the Mahatma Gandhi in New Delhi, India. The award was presented to UST in recognition of its outstanding CSR efforts driven by its corporate commitment to transforming lives across five key focus areas – Education, Health, Livelihood, Environment, and Disaster Relief.

As part of its CSR activities, UST aims to provide accessible, equitable and quality education to 20,000 children by the year 2022 by providing critical training, funding education for children with special needs and investing in child-friendly community libraries. Furthermore, UST is dedicated to taking a comprehensive whole-of-society approach to health initiatives, helping to fund health services for people with disabilities as well as mental health programs, substance abuse prevention campaigns and maternal health drives. The company provides financial backing for critical programs that offer training and job placement for rural youth as well as those that work to empower female entrepreneurs.

UST recognizes that climate change is amplifying the effects of natural disasters, so has adopted a two-pronged approach that emphasises disaster relief as well as sustainability and environmental protection. This means that in addition to relief efforts that provide food and medical supplies to afflicted areas, UST CSR campaigns prioritize the preservation of forests and other key environmental systems. UST’s CSR initiatives are also aligned with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The UST Welfare Foundation supports UST’s CSR efforts across its full range of focus areas as implementation partners. In addition, UST Welfare Foundation programs integrate with COLORS, the Company’s employee engagement framework, to ensure the active participation of UST employees and contribution toward meaningful CSR initiatives that produce tangible results.

“We are very pleased by the positive impact created by the CSR initiatives undertaken by UST teams. The Mahatma Award for Excellence confirms the effectiveness of UST’s comprehensive efforts to transform lives in our communities and make a positive impact to our nation. To empower our employees to become social leaders, UST works to raise awareness of social causes, encourages participation, and provides various platforms where all employees can collaborate and contribute. This award reflects how far we’ve come since our Office of Values and Culture (OVC) was established in 2019 with the mission of sustaining, strengthening, and scaling the values and culture of our organization. We are extremely proud of this award as we congratulate the CSR volunteers at UST for their significant contribution towards these projects,” said Sunil Balakrishnan, Chief Values Officer and Global Head for Development Center Operations, UST.

“It is an absolute honour to receive this award and is a true testimony to the continuous work that UST employees at every level of the organization have applied towards transforming the lives of people and improving the environment. This award is a source of encouragement for us to double down our efforts as we continue to create positive impact and build a more sustainable planet. We appreciate the commitment and hard work that our CSR volunteers have put in that makes it possible to achieve our goals,” Smita Sharma, Global Program Manager – CSR and Sustainability, UST.

This year, UST also won the wins the ‘Best Environment Protection Initiative of the Year – 2022’ at the Indian CSR Awards 2022. All major programs in this arena are through direct implementation, volunteer engagement, and NGO partnerships.