Socially aware corporate of the year: Right axis

The Axis Bank Foundation works towards creating sustainable livelihood opportunities in remote areas

Business Standard Corporate Social Responsibility Awards 2016

For more than 10 years now, the Axis Bank Foundation has been working with a set of initiatives aimed at providing sustainable livelihood opportunities in some of the remote regions of the country. 

"Our goal is to provide sustainable livelihood to a million people by the end of 2017. As of February, we've achieved 90 per cent of our target and would be surpassing it by the stipulated timeframe. This is one of the biggest achievements for the foundation," said Rajesh Dahiya, trustee, Axis Bank Foundation, and executive director (corporate centre) at Axis Bank. 

The foundation was set up in 2006 and it works with 23 partners to execute the livelihood programme in 26 states. It had received contributions worth Rs 334 crore from Axis Bank and related organisations until the end of 2015-16. Dahiya said the livelihood programme emerged as an area of focus because it was seen as a means to the end in providing financial and economic inclusion for communities in rural pockets that have been left out of the nation's larger economic narrative. As a bank's foundation programme, this also tied in with the overall vision and mission goals of the group and provided the foundation with a strategic and focused thrust for the work it wanted to do. 

However, as is the case with most such interventions, it is almost impossible to define the scope of work around a single objective. At the Foundation, this work has meant that the team has often had to engage with multiple projects that contribute to its larger livelihood goal of enhancing the economic capability of rural communities. It has thus initiated projects on improving access and quality of education and supporting the victims of highway trauma in some of the rural areas that it works in. 

The Foundation has chosen to work in regions where there has been a steady degradation of available natural resources which has, in turn, led to deficit of knowledge and skill among the communities. The Foundation said it looks for non-government organisations (NGOs) that demonstrate their prowess in using the grants to bring about multi-dimensional change. 

The grant-led approach allows foundations to scale up the impact of their work; it has been the path set and followed by organisations globally. However, one of the big hurdles in such an approach, as opposed to direct intervention in the communities, is choosing the right partners. 

Dahiya said it was a challenge to find a good number of NGO partners who can work to scale. Another challenge, he said, has been the creation of resilient social infrastructure to support the communities. "Capacitating beneficiaries to run these community-based organisations is another challenge we encounter." The need today is for cross-functional partnerships among NGOs with different functional expertise, as that would help better utilisation of resources and provide an impetus for new agencies to emerge in the same space.