Employees Lead the Way on Community Investment in India

By Kimberly Bishop | Corporate Responsibility

Article 135 of the India Company Act, introduced the first mandatory CSR law in the world, requiring large companies to spend at least 2 percent of their annual profits on giving back to the local community. To meet this mandate, we turned to both our India-based employees and to CAF India, a leading international nonprofit working to make giving more effective, for guidance.

NortonLifeLock’s corporate responsibility strategy focuses on community investments in STEM learning (science, technology, engineering, and math); diversity; online safety; and environmental responsibility, and we also listen to our employees and invest in the causes that they believe in.

Based on employee feedback, in FY 2020, we provided assistance to four charities doing important work on the ground in India:

1. Our nearly $100,000 grant to Save the Children supported their “Creating Opportunities for Technology Enabled Learning” program in 10 schools in Pune. The program introduces technology-based learning solutions to disadvantaged and vulnerable children, giving them a better chance to succeed in school and reach their full potential.
2. Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) in partnership with Rainforest Alliance will use $100,000 from NortonLifeLock to enable locally managed conservation of forest and wildlife habitat while improving livelihoods in India's Western Ghats. This project will work with the indigenous Soliga tribe, the primary and original inhabitants of Biligiri Rangaswamy Hills Temple Tiger Reserve.
3. With our grant funding, SayTrees will empower people to give back to nature and live in an environment conducive to their health and well-being. Our volunteers will take part in a tree planting opportunity later this year.
4. Agastya International Foundation will implement the NortonLifeLock i-Mobile Lab using our grant funding. The i-Mobile program will fill a critical gap in self-learning of science concepts and digital education, building a spirit of enquiry, computational, and logical thinking. A van, equipped with 10 laptops, will provide hands-on learning for children that do not have access to technology.

In addition, our partnership with CAF India has resulted in NortonLifeLock funding seven additional organizations. We provided three grants to Technology, Education, Research and Rehabilitation for the Environment (TERRE) for Train the Trainer funding. This environmental education and awareness program uses theater and a quiz competition to raise awareness and promote environmental education for all students.

We also awarded three grants to Seva Sahayog for a wellness program for adolescent girls, a Science, Technology, Education, and Personality Education (STEP) program in local Pune schools, and a health and hygiene program for disadvantaged girls and women that live in slum conditions.

Other grant recipients included the IDEA Foundation, the Women’s Organization for Socio-Cultural Awareness (WOSCA), Teach for India’s Fellowship Program, Magic Bus’s Computational Learning Program, and Swadhar IDWC (Institute for Development of Women & Children). We also provide Disaster Relief Grants—most recently, supporting 157 families affected by the Gaja Cyclone in November 2018 and 269 families affected by the Maharashtra floods in the Rajapurwadi village in Kolhapur in September 2019.

We are proud to be able to support the local communities where our employees live and work  all over the globe. For more information about our corporate giving program visit our 2019 Corporate Resonsibility Report.