A student's dream come true

The ambition of a young girl named Ms. Thaw Thaw* was to attend a university in the city after finishing high school. As she had studied hard for the matriculation exam, she was accepted by Myanmar Maritime University in Yangon, a commercial city and the former capital of Myanmar. Her dream came true but the only difficulty was that her parents could not fully support her financially for her university education or afford the cost for her to live in the city. Thaw Thaw was from a middle-income family from a village called Phaung Gyee, which is situated far from the city.

It is not easy for a student like Thaw Thaw to live in a city such as Yangon by only depending on limited support from parents. She desperately needed extra income. Then one day, while she was browsing through social media, she fortunately found – and applied for – an advertisement for a part-time-job opportunity for students. While she was nervously waiting to be interviewed, she noticed about a hundred young people like her who were energetic, enthusiastic, and from various universities throughout the country.

After a few days, all of her worries were relieved by the news that she was hired as a part-time employee at Max Energy. She could now study with fewer burdens and share the news and the happiness with her family back home.

Creating part-time-job opportunities for students in Myanmar

In developed countries, it is a common practice that students take responsibility for their university educations after high school. Various part-time-job opportunities are available, especially as the governments also encourage the employers. In Myanmar, the culture of part-time-job opportunities for university students is not well-developed, and mostly only full-time-job opportunities are available to youths.

Max Energy would like to support youths so that they do not have to struggle to afford their university educations by only depending on their parents or families for support. Therefore, Max Energy introduced a part-time-job program for students as part of its CSR program in 2014. Whoever attends a university and is 18 years of age is eligible to apply for this program, regardless of religion, race, and origins.

The program was publicly announced through various communication channels, such as the official website of Max Energy, social media, journals, newsletters, etc. This drew the attention of university students and news spread rapidly through word-of-mouth. After processing many interested enquiries, more than 100 university students were selected for personal interviews. Once considered as potential candidates, they had to attend in-class training sessions for six days as a mandatory initial step.

During training on day one, an OHS (occupational health and safety) course that includes training on fire safety/fire fighting and first aid is conducted by a professional third-party expert appointed by Max Energy. The remaining training days are filled with topics such as customer service, the company’s policies and profile, departmental operation procedures and workflow, employees’ rights and responsibilities, etc. Once in-class training is completed, candidates are assigned to respective petrol stations for practical on-the-job training with uniforms and personal protective equipment, the same as with full-time employees. After several days of on-the-job training at assigned petrol stations, candidates become official part-time employees of Max Energy, and their weekends become more meaningful.

About Max Energy

Max Energy is a private-owned petrol station business operating in Myanmar with more than 750 employees. As the slogan states, “Max Energy for Your Satisfaction,” we are fully committed to achieving high levels of customer satisfaction while maintaining our position as one of the market leaders in Myanmar as a petrol station business.

In Myanmar, before 2010, all petrol stations were nationally owned and the economy was not free-market. Consumers were given quotas for the amount of petrol they could buy at designated petrol station, making it extremely inconvenient for the consumers.

In 2010, as Myanmar’s political reform process was initiated, the government introduced national privatization programs to fuel the country’s booming economy. Since then, Max Energy has expanded the petrol station business throughout the country with the aim of achieving high levels of customer satisfaction by providing high-quality products with accurate quantities at reasonable prices.

Max Energy and CSR

As one of Max Energy’s missions is to be a responsible organization for the future growth and development of the community as well as its organization, we have been committed to CSR since the establishment of Max Energy. We actively support the Ayeyarwady Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 2010, with whom we have been contributing to the country’s education sector, health sector as well as sports and religious affairs. However, our CSR activities are not just limited to contributions to the Ayeyarwady Foundation. We always try our best to make contributions for the benefit of all our stakeholders.

In December 2012, we happened to learn about the United Nations Global Compact, the corporate responsibility initiative – the world’s largest, with more than 8,000 business and non-business participants in 135 countries. Soon after, Max Energy became a proud registered participant in the Global Compact in January 2013. This was a corporate milestone for Max Energy, which is the first company within the Myanmar petrol station industry to participate in the Global Compact. We are confident of becoming a responsible organization through our CSR implementation by incorporating the Ten Principles of the Global Compact into our business practices. Max Energy has been adapting the Ten Principles as part of its culture and day-to-day operations.

Max Energy seriously believes in responsible business and sustainable business growth and has initiated and implemented many CSR programs: taking care of employees’ welfare, providing career development, contributing to environmental programs such as tree planting, creating job opportunities for the communities where businesses operate, supporting young generations by creating part-time-job opportunities, etc.

One of Max Energy’s missions is to support the younger generation: Our part-time-job program for students is to be expanded all over the county. As of now, almost 10 percent of our full-time employees have been appointed through our program and we plan to hire more in the future. In this program, we provide proper training, which supports the safety and security of the students. Max Energy also fully supports their career development by giving them priority to become full-time employees if they wish.

Moreover, Max Energy supports educational stipends for the children of our employees. Our educational stipend program supports employees at all student levels: kindergarten, primary school, middle school, high school, university, and even master’s degree students. We also provide healthcare programs for our employees and annual medical checkups.

Last but not least, since Max Energy is strongly committed to sustainable growth of the organization by supporting and contributing to the communities and the environment, various CSR programs will be carried out as our business grows. By doing so, we sincerely hope to support sustainable development, not only for our organization but also for the young generation, the communities, and the country.

*Her real name was omitted for the sake of confidentiality. She provided her story for this article and for reference purposes.