Sunday August 2, 2009
Reaching out to the people
By ROUWEN LIN
A company with deep roots in Malaysia reaching back to the 1960s wants to show a new face to the world.
THOSE of us who are old enough would remember those old Guinness stout ads: hearty working men grinning while having a tipple and ending with the tagline that it’s “good for you”.
The company has been providing the world with countless pints of beer in casks, kegs, cans, and bottles for 250 years. Now, Guinness Anchor Bhd (GAB) – as the local company that brews the originally Irish brand, among other beverages, is now called – is all set to introduce a different side of its personality through its corporate responsibility (CR) initiatives.
Renuka Indrarajah says GAB has a long history of being involved in the community. – YAP CHEE HONG / The Star Incorporated in July 2007 and launched in March this year, the GAB Foundation has embarked on several projects with one purpose in mind: to enrich the community it functions in.
“Because of the sensitivity of the business, there are limitations to what we can do as a company, so we reached out to the people through the GAB foundation – our CR arm that operates as a separate legal entity,” explains GAB Foundation management committee director Renuka Indrarajah.
Governed by a board of trustees comprising independent nominees and members of GAB’s senior management team, the foundation focuses on three main pillars: water conservation, education, and community work. These causes also resonate with GAB’s history and core values, says Renuka.
“We don’t want to just donate a sum of money and leave it at that because we don’t know how effectively it will be managed. We want to make a real difference through specific projects, and to do that we decided to focus our activity in these three main areas and come up with long-term projects that would benefit the community. Our projects are always closely monitored to ensure that they work,” she says.
On the water conservation front, the foundation established the Working Actively Through Education and Rehabilitation (Water) project in 2007 with the objectives of providing assistance to and supporting water conservation programmes, educating the public about the importance of water and how to conserve water sources, such as our rivers and streams.
Although two-thirds of the world is covered in water, less than 1% of that is available for human consumption. Improper water management, rapid industrialisation and pollution, and a general lack of civic consciousness have contributed to the water shortage problem at hand.
Recognising this, the foundation has collaborated with local NGO Global Environment Centre on a three-year project to rehabilitate the tributary of Sungai Penchala, which runs behind GAB’s brewery in Sungei Way, Selangor.
“Our goals are to improve the river’s water quality and develop a community participation model for large scale implementation of this project,” says Renuka.
“It’s a really big challenge to educate people and change mindsets – it took us more than a year to engage the residents and local Government but we’ve now reached a point where we’ve got tremendous support from a host of people, including the local city council and the Department of Fisheries,” she says with a smile.
Wading in murky water to clear rubbish traps hardly sounds like a typical family weekend getaway, but Renuka commends the residents’ enthusiastic participation in the effort to rehabilitate the waters.
“They get into the river to clear the rubbish traps on a regular basis and now they are starting their own recycling and composting initiatives. We have also provided them with two kits to monitor the water quality, and we are really happy to see that it has shown signs of improvement,” she says, adding that efforts to recreate the natural habitat of species in the surrounding area are also in progress.
The foundation also plans to extend its work upstream and to launch a river cabin that will house a water testing tool kit and serve as a resource and meeting area for the community.
In addition to the water rehabilitation project, the foundation has reached out to reinforce the water conservation message through storytelling sessions with children from welfare homes, community centres, and orphanages in the Klang Valley.
“We wanted our Storytelling With Gabby sessions to be interactive, so we sat down with child educators to discuss the content and how best to present it.
“We get the children involved in activities such as creating artwork to reinforce the messages and concepts they have learned.
“After each storytelling session conducted by one of our 18 trained storytellers, we gauge the effectiveness of the programme by having a measurement and evaluation specialist conduct interviews with parents and school coordinators,” says Renuka.
Over 500 children have benefited from the initiative since it began last year and it is very gratifying that results show that almost all of them were able to recap and implement knowledge imparted to them at these sessions, she adds.
In its pledge to support vernacular schools, the foundation has donated school amenities to more than 1,000 needy students from the Malaysian Indian community. In September last year, the Supporting Malaysian Indian Learning, Education and Sports (SMILES) programme was launched. One of its initiatives is the Total Immersion Camp, an intensive 21-day English proficiency programme for students making the move from vernacular Tamil schools to mainstream secondary schools.
“Many students from vernacular primary schools struggle with the language barrier they face when they enter mainstream secondary schools, and more than 70% drop out after two or three years.
“TIC will provide them with the language skills they need to assimilate this new environment. Even though the Government has made the decision to revert to Malay in the teaching of Science and Mathematics, English is still relevant as it is widely used in the workforce and as a second language,” Renuka points out.
Heartened by the success of this pilot project, the foundation has recently expanded its target group to primary school children.
“Rather than wait until after their primary school education, we think it’s a good idea to start them young.”
With that in mind, the foundation is sponsoring the English Enrichment Programme under which English classes are offered to over 500 Year One students every Saturday, for the whole year, to equip them with the necessary language skills.
Renuka explains that, “We chose to do away with the conventional textbook approach and instead incorporate songs, public speaking skills, and excursions into the lessons to keep the students interested.
Plans are in the pipeline for the English Enrichment Programme to continue catering to this first batch of students throughout their primary school education.
Meanwhile, reading corners set up in various schools in Kuala Selangor ensure an early introduction to the language and exposure to a whole new world through books that these children would otherwise be deprived of.
“Many of these school do not even have libraries, so you can imagine the excitement among these kids when they are presented with books!”
The GAB Foundation is also looking to reach out to other communities, such as the Sikhs, who need assistance.
Renuka says that CR initiatives are a big part of GAB’s history, as the company has always been involved in giving back to the community: “With every project we carry out, we are always looking to see how we can make it more effective and how we can expand it to better reach people and make a meaningful difference in their lives,” she concludes.
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