Come November 29, Team Deloitte will move to 400 locations in eight cities for a community initiative. The voluntary community development programme and its objectives that starts on its Impact Day extend into full-year activities, covering education, employability, orphanage care, health, hygiene and environment.
This year, it plans to cover around 300,000 individuals across India. "Giving back is critical for us. We always track our local communities, their growth, and the needs to serve them better. Things like Impact Day are driving the culture," said Hari Kumar, regional managing principal, US India offices, Deloitte,
From November 29, 17,000 Deloittees, armed with 450 NGOs and volunteers, will work on 'education and employment'. Under this, it plans to reach out to under-privileged children at the school-level to make them a part of formal education.
This involves setting up schools, upgrading the infrastructure, student communication skills and teacher training programmes. "The idea is not to replace the existing systems and teachers but to address the lacunae and try to improve their performance," said Kumar.
In partnership with Mumbai-based NGO Pratham, over the last three years, it has built seven schools (four in Hyderabad and three in Pune) for under-privileged girl students. "Any cost would be covered by us. One day of our revenues is our funding besides other costs involved," says Kumar.
The second spectrum of this is to provide career counselling and coaching for under-privileged students to become good graduates. For this, it has teamed up with 'Junior Achievement'. It also runs the Junior Achievement Titan Challenge, a pan-India initiative for spreading entrepreneurial skills among the children. Some of the school students would also be tutored at the Deloitte India workplaces during the weekends.
