Creating an Impact on Education for Girls in India

With girls representing two-third of the world’s uneducated children and women representing two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults, it has been acknowledged that successful education for girls and women is a necessary mechanism for breaking the cycle of poverty, myths, and social norms, for ensuring the well-being and health of children, and for the long-term success of developing countries.

Whilst education in India is free, the materials to support that education are not. These materials includes uniforms, clothes, notebooks, and personal hygiene products – expenditures that underprivileged families are often unwilling or unable to make for their daughters.

Project Nanhi Kali is a participatory project where individuals, groups, and companies are encouraged to sponsor the education of girls. The Nanhi Kali project is jointly managed by the Naandi Foundation and the K.C. Mahindra Education Trust. The Capgemini Group is currently the second largest corporate sponsor of the Nanhi Kali project, which supports the education of over 10,000 girls in India.

What started as a friendship between Capgemini India and Capgemini Norway while looking for ways to support the Rightshore® (Offshoring) strategy and to promote understanding and cooperation has now grown into a truly global Capgemini Group program and a strong Naandi-Capgemini relationship.

Today, over 10 Capgemini Group offices around the world are supporting the Nanhi Kali project. Several different initiatives and schemes have been implemented. For example, Capgemini India, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, Australia, Slovakia, as well as Sogeti India have adopted the project as a formal community initiative. Within those offices, a payroll contribution system has been set up in which employees have the ability to voluntarily contribute to the Nanhi Kali project and either individually or collectively sponsor education initiatives. Capgemini Norway in particular has taken a big step through its collaboration with the Naandi Foundation and has jointly established its first foundation outside of India – Naandi Norway. Many of these initiatives are being matched by Capgemini, ensuring a combination of employee passion and company commitment to the Nanhi Kali project.

Capgemini Finland has integrated their work with the Naandi Foundation into their leadership development programs and at a Group level, successfully implementing initiatives in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal.

“What’s really worked is the fact that there are a lot of Naandi evangelists in the Capgemini world! Each country office now has an ambassador for Naandi and there’s nothing more credible than one of your employees – who has been there, seen it, and done it – coming back and talking about it,” explains Manoj Kumar, CEO of the Naandi Foundation.

Throughout our 40-year history, Capgemini has built its business upon strong ethical values that underpin our approach to all aspects of our business. Joining the UN Global Compact in 2004 was a natural extension of these values in helping to remain a responsible business. As a global company and with our current growth in developing countries, we are aware of the different challenges that need to be faced, such as Human Rights standards, opportunities for education and employment, and the need for respect and understanding of different cultures.

Signing up to the ten principles of the Global Compact adds to how we can contribute and leverage our skills, our people, and our know-how to make a difference. Our partnership with the Naandi Foundation is based on our belief that major community programs with a strong alignment to a business strategy have a far greater impact. Joining the forces of our employees with organizations such as the Naandi Foundation to help others strengthens our team spirit, improves communication, and gives us a better understanding of the communities around us.

Capgemini has a strong desire to support diversity – gender diversity in particular. We believe that diversity and the elimination of discrimination are key to our long-term business health. Working with the Naandi Foundation and supporting education for girls in India has made gender-specific issues more visible to all employees and gives our people the opportunity to be actively involved. This too supports our commitment to the first and the sixth principles of the UN Global Compact, which concern the protection of internationally proclaimed Human Rights and the elimination of discrimination with respect to employment and occupation.

Our partnership with the Naandi Foundation offers Indian girls dignity, education, equality, and empowerment – the same attributes that our people seek for themselves and the company they work with. Through our community programs, we have the ability to bring the UN Global Compact principles, our values, and our own business principles alive.

Aligning our corporate responsibility and sustainability approach with our corporate strategy provides benefits through enhanced reputation, greater consumer and employer brand-awareness, as well as attracting and increasing employee engagement, which have a longer-lasting and more effective impact on the community. At the heart of our business strategy, we focus on creating a diverse, engaged, and skilled workforce; developing strong client relationships; developing our Rightshore® approach; and supporting the development of India as a long-term and viable business location.

We see that community initiatives that are aligned to our corporate strategy enable us to have far more impact, and hence our initiatives are aligned to three core themes: Education – our conviction is that education is the key to helping countries and communities develop; Diversity – a source of richness and competitive advantage; Growth – our growth in the developing world brings specific duties and is especially relevant for our current strategy in India.

Our partnership with the Naandi Foundation is strongly aligned with our business purpose and community strategy. Not only does it make business-sense and ensure employee engagement and motivation, it helps with our support of the education of many girls in India and has a positive community impact.

Our corporate strategy and Rightshore® approach has enabled us to work with countries such as India. Our partnership with the Naandi Foundation has enabled us to change the way we think and embrace multiculturalism as we become a truly open and diverse company that is focussed on changing the lives of the girls we support.

As a global multicultural company, we celebrate many different religious festivities. For the last two years, we have run a holiday season e-card initiative lasting from Diwali to the Chinese New Year (taking in Christmas, Eid, Hanukkah, and Thanksgiving). In the initiative, our people have the ability to send e-cards to family, friends, colleagues, and clients. For every 1000 e-cards sent, the Capgemini Group funded the education of a girl in India. Last year 75,000 e-cards were sent and this year 113,000 e-cards. The e-card artwork used was made by the girls in India through various Art Camps run by Capgemini Germany and Norway, in which our people spend a day working with the children on art pieces.

Capgemini also actively promotes International Women’s Day around the Group and we ran an online campaign in support of the Naandi Foundation. Our people were invited to express support for the Nanhi Kali initiative through a simple online click – for every 250 clicks, the Group supported the education of a girl in India, translating into 33 more girls who received support.

Our simple but effective e-card and click campaigns have allowed us to demonstrate that, although we may have a consistent delivery model across the world, we should actively make room for everyone and create awareness around our differences. The marked uptake of participation in the e-card and click campaigns shows the success and enthusiasm of our employees in supporting the Naandi Foundation.

Because the take-up of the Naandi Foundation around the Group has been fostered at a grassroots level – without mandating initiatives or pushing particular diversity platforms onto our people – we are changing the way we think about diversity. Very soon most of our home-grown executive talent will have been impacted and touched by the program – already, many people have visited the girls we are supporting.

Community projects can be used to develop leadership skills and multicultural awareness, both of which are necessities in today’s global business world. Such programs often require little investment when compared to the returns generated, but they have the valuable ability to accelerate skill-building, cultural awareness, pride, and commitments whilst maintaining engagement in tough times.

We have integrated the Naandi Foundation into our people development at our Capgemini University to help illustrate to our people the link between the community, the importance of diversity, and enabling multicultural understanding. We are instilling diversity into our DNA through people’s appreciation of our work with the Naandi Foundation.

Capgemini Finland successfully launched the “Leading Together” program in 2008, which is based on a collaboration between Capgemini Finland and India. The training program intends to impart the efficiency of Rightshore® collaboration by using the Naandi Foundation as a learning vehicle. The teams were charged with the assignment of creating an innovative, out-of-the-box strategy to help raise the visibility of the Naandi Foundation, both inside and outside Capgemini.

Community programs can also be a great means to collaborate with clients. For example, joint sponsorship or matching programs can involve both client and supplier by building increased collaboration but also by generating pride and a sense of shared achievement amongst the client/supplier teams working together.

Our Norwegian team started working with the Naandi Foundation in relation to the growth in business being delivered out of India. Business growth came when we extended the Naandi Foundation to client partnerships, whereby each Indian employee participating in a client account results in a girl being supported by both the client and our Norwegian affiliate.

Aker Solutions in Norway chose Capgemini for its capability and also indicated that Capgemini’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice had been an important component in selecting a supplier. It was Capgemini’s support of the Naandi Foundation in India that highlighted how good its CSR program is and this became a key differentiator in winning the deal. Capgemini made a commitment whereby for every person working on the Aker account, Capgemini would sponsor a schoolgirl; Aker Solutions subsequently agreed to match Capgemini’s commitment. This is a great example of CSR in action and the difference it can make to clients, employees, and the community.

Client engagement is the ultimate accolade for this type of program, and to have clients willingly agree to join in our program and sponsor girls in India is a strong endorsement.

“In the case of Capgemini Norway, Capgemini registered as a charity, known as Naandi Norway, the first Naandi outside of India. As a result, Capgemini Norway now has a very interesting profile in Norwegian society. Norway’s parliament knows about the relationship with Naandi, as does Norway’s media. And potential Norwegian employees know about it as well as current and potential clients. So while following passion the initiative has also been converted into a business opportunity to raise the profile of the company in Norway and win business. To my mind it’s a fantastic way of how you can start with just a link to a charity and take it to a new level,” says Manoj Kumar, CEO of the Naandi Foundation.

During these uncertain times, the need to motivate and keep employees engaged has never been more vital. Research has shown that high employee engagement has a direct impact on the bottom line. For many years, employee survey results have been analyzed to identify key drivers or opportunities to increase people engagement. Our Capgemini Global Group Employee Survey 2008 shows that our community work is a key driver in employee engagement and retention of talented people.

Employees often enjoy participating in community programs, making them proud of what their company is doing. In the more socially aware environment of today, we can mark the shift from feel-good programs to those that are aligned to the corporate strategy and are designed to ensure motivation.

Our relationship with the Naandi Foundation in India and our support for the Nanhi Kali project has helped us contribute to a better livelihood for the more unprivileged groups in society. The partnership has not only enabled over 10,000 girls in India to have the right to education, it has also brought along several business benefits, including support for our Rightshore® strategy, building client intimacy, ensuring employee engagement, and helping our people understand the importance of Human Rights, discrimination, and cultural differences.