Social Bridges has been the first phase of an experimental project. The project has successfully completed it’s first phase with significant impact. The closing down of the blog doesn’t mean that we are putting an end to our efforts. From hereon, we want to focus more on direct action; reaching out to common public and other stakeholders and doing field work. The blog was initiated with a six month map in mind, our next step is to sign up more partners and take the discussion on CSR to the next level. Beyond this post, the blog will become in-active, although the existing content will still be available to all audience for commenting and reference.

The content will also be accessible from Telenor Pakistan’s website in a few days, there might be some not-so-regular additions to the content depending on the work that we’ll take on. We’ll keep our readers updated about our future plans.

Social Bridges – a joint venture of Telenor Pakistan and CDF Software – has completed six successful months. The initial purpose of starting this blog was to encourage open discussions between the community, non-profit organizations and the corporate sector. Generally, the corporate sector has been reluctant to come out and openly discuss and debate the Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. In our quest for a partner, Telenor Pakistan was the only company which came forward and took the bold decision of working with us on the venture, although a number of corporate sector entities were contacted.

We started with the following mission statement

As Pakistan’s economy has grown, several sectors have boomed at the same time - media, advertising, banking, finance, telecom, and others. Consumers and people have not only enabled these sectors to grow immensely, but have allowed corporations to touch and influence their lives in profound ways.

Corporations, their products and services, and the way they are connecting with society can affect how people behave in their lives; can affect cultural norms; can affect societal values; and can be a beacon of guidance to society as it heads into the future.

Everyone from farmers, chai wallas, doctors, educationalists, customer service professionals and more have seen dramatic, disruptive change in their lifestyles because of an increase in communications technologies and microlending.

But are corporations aware of the high standards of responsibility that a socially-aware society is now beginning to place on them? If companies can actually change the way we think about the future, the way we speak, how we respect one another and come closer, do those companies even know how they should be thinking or planning about their social responsibilities?

Can they find an actual business incentive to do so?

Social Bridges aims to answer these questions. We are bringing together leaders from corporations, MNCs, academic institutes, NGOs, government bodies and even international experts together in one place here on the Social Bridges platform. What this means is that YOU can now have direct access to speak to them, discuss the realities of their work with them and together this community can explore the right path of CSR activities that corporations can adopt!

We aspired to bring all the stakeholders on one platform and we did manage to do well in this regard. Our basic aim was to engage all stakeholders through deep and thoughtful discussions about social responsibility and ethical business practices. To cover this agenda, Social Bridges conducted interviews of many corporate sector executives to get to know about their companies’ practices and social investments. Tough questions were asked and important information was extracted. This also allowed our readers to question the credibility of any company which was not doing good or had some ‘dubious’ operating procedures.

The education part of the venture where we ran detailed pieces on the local and global CSR policies and changing mindsets, the new green paradigm and its impact on Pakistan and sustainable development kept our readers glued to this blog.

Social Bridges also introduced many world renowned CSR and sustainability experts to common Pakistanis by conducting a series of interviews. We involved them by asking question with local context of a developing country and sought solutions; which they happily provided. A couple of them are quite eager to even work on ground for us, if the conditions allow and there are chances.

Social Bridges was one of the most popular and regularly updated blogs in the social and green sector. This resulted in some popular blogs linking to our posts and some renowned social and green sector person coming and commenting on our site. Some of our posts were also featured in the research work of international social scientists and activists. AllThingsReconsiderd and CorporateResponsibilityNet – two major CSR portals of the world - also cross-posted our articles.

The traffic and attention to this blog has increased sharply during last few months.

Thank you very much all of you for your continued patronage and regular contributions. We are glad to see that so many amongst us have the common vision for sustainable, robust and socially responsible business practices.

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Sometime ago, in the not-so-distant past, we were bombarded with lengthy ads with cool looking dudes doing something extraordinarily brave (like cliff hanging) with a puff of smoke in the peripheral vision, ending with a short and speedy warning ‘smoking is injurious to health’. We’d also have similar disclaimers and caution messages for medicine advertisements with a voice speaking at a 100 words per minute (or something close to that) to ‘use medicine with doctor’s directions, keep them away from children, and if the illness is serious consult a doctor’. When I was young I used to try to speak at the same speed, but never came close.

This post is not about those ads, because they still tried to warn the consumers of any possible harms, no matter how ineffective or annoyingly paced the messages were.

My issue is different. It’s with the product marketers who know that excess usage of their products can be harmful - still they promote the excess usage without any warning. For example, does a soft-drink manufacturer realize potential harm that is caused to bones, especially of children if they drink excess of carbonated drink? I still remember the advertisement of a soft drink company which showed three kids drinking different types of drink (It was I guess tea, artificial juice and a soft drink) and the one who drank the soft drink became a pop-star while others grew up to be losers. Or another such ad in which a child doesn’t drink milk so his mother gives him milk toffee as a replacement for a glass of milk. Do these companies realize the effect these things can have on children’s health. Do they even care, at all?

Corporations in Pakistan are waking up to realize the power of children in influencing the buying power of a family, (hence the ‘captain safeguard’ and ‘life buoy’ germ busters campaigns), but do they even stop to think for a moment that all their products might not be suitable for people under a certain age bracket. Or at least have the decency of including a warning saying that excess usage of their product for children under a certain age is not recommended.

Or is due to absence of any check and balance mechanism in Pakistan they just want to maximize on the profits and ignore the harm their product brings to our young generation?

The problem isn’t so much the misguided ads, but the philosophy the advertisers live by. As consumers it feels like all those corporations care about are their bottom-lines without even stopping to think about consumer rights or awareness for a second. Exploiting and manipulating masses through advertisements that run non-stop. If this isn’t a form of brain-washing or capitalism to the nth degree, then I’m not sure what is. However, I understand that companies businesses run on successful sales - and successful sales are proportional to the brand’s presence and awareness. Having said that, I also know that if companies become a little more conscious of their advertising messages and themes, they’re brands would be better appreciated and looked up to.

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Isn’t that what social responsibility implies, to improve the society make it a better place to live make people more comfortable.

They can claim that they are doing that because of their products, for example all the telcos can easily claim that now every person has a mobile in Pakistan even the low income groups which was not possible few years back, or similarly all bottled water companies can claim they are now providing clean and safe water. This is all true to a certain extent.

But what about majority as one of the readers has rightly pointed out

Industry revenues are based on these mainstream factors and eliminating poverty is the heartbeat of all the problem whether it comes to you in the form of purchasing power or uplifitng the life trends from one consumer sect to another (higher). These things grow to be a central part of your company plans especially in our GDP environment and rotating them around different conferences provides with the direction to other participants to target the source issue of the market because at the end of the day if I sell dialup connection I would not want to sell at 2Rs if I’m selling at 5 today and you can only do that by increasing the consumer power at various levels and keeping it stable.”

Specially so in the current scenarios when the prices of basics like wheat and fuel are rising every day, think of these simple calculations, a person with a 7000 monthly income might previously be able to drink a bottle of soft drink once in a while or watch a movie for entertainment in a month, but now he has no extra budget because of price hike. His earning has not grown accordingly so ultimately he will give off all these extra things to make the ends meet. And ultimately the sales of the big corporations will be affected.

What they need to realize and act upon is to either bring their products in range with the buying power of the ordinary man or do something concrete which lifts the overall standard of living, this can be done by creating more jobs focusing on volumes.

Here I will quote an example I witnessed some time back, when Atlas Honda Motorcycles remarkably reduced prices of their motor bike (for competition or increase sales), the effect was that there was a sudden decrease in prices of second hand motorcycles, somebody I know of lower income group who had never imagined he would buy a motorcycle in his life, bought one because they were suddenly in his range, and that effectively translated into him being available for better jobs which required ‘employee should have his own transport’.

So we are not suggesting here that all corporations start decreasing their prices but they should collectively or individually start taking concrete steps that help increase the living standard of an ordinary man increase his buying power and ultimately the reward will be theirs because this cycle will increase their sales and profits

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Pakistan Foundation for Fighting Blindness (PFFB) and Al-Shifa Trust Eye Low-Vision Center were awarded a project which will help visually impaired people to effectively use IT and Telecom services. Funding for this project is being done by Universal Service Fund (USF), Following is the press release from USF

Islamabad, May 17, 2008: Universal Service Fund has launched a special project for “Enabling Persons with disabilities to use telecom services” which aims to increase accessibility of IT and telecom for people with different disabilities.

This announcement was made by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, at an event organized by Ministry of Information Technology to mark the World Telecommunications Day. The theme for this years world telecom day was “Connecting Persons with Disabilities: ICT Opportunities for all”. In this connection, two programmes were launched under the Special Projects of USF.

Chief Executive Officer of USF, Parvez Iftikhar, shed light on the desired objectives of the said projects. He informed the audience that Board of Directors of USF in its 10^th Meeting approved the projects submitted by Pakistan Foundation for Fighting Blindness (PFFB) and Al-Shifa Trust Eye Low-Vision Center. The main objectives of these projects are to expand and upgrade the Audio World and IT helpline programmes being run by PFFB and up-gradation and establishment of computerized Low Vision Rehabilitation Centres by Al-Shifa Trust. These projects will also create job opportunities for such people by providing them telecom and IT related trainings and create an environment for them to get educated using appropriate technologies. Moreover, this initiative will enhance the social development, through ICTs, for the persons with disabilities and integrate them fully as productive elements in the society. He further said that he hoped this programme will help people with disabilities overcome their disability and assist them to compete on even basis with their non-disabled peers by using Telecom and E-services.

few days back Ministry of Information technology celebrated the ‘World Telecommunication and Information Technology day’ the theme for which was ’Connecting Persons with Disabilities: ICT Opportunities for all’.

This is a very pleasant news, now that the project is awarded what needs to be seen is how these two entities execute it, Alshifa-Trust has a very good reputation of being one of the best centers specially for the visually impaired, I am sure they will be able to utilize this fund to the best extent.

This small contribution from the telecom companies signifies the importance of giving back to the community, the telecom sector has reaped huge benefits from the untapped market in Pakistan and their gesture to help the soceity is a very welcome step.

Netxpress online also has detailed coverage of this here with, here is an exceprt from their story on what the CEO of USF Parvez Iftikhar had to say

Al-Shifa Tust Eye Hospital is one of the organizations, awarded the project. The project was awarded keeping in view the profound services of Al-Shifa Trust and their fight against blindness.” said Chief Executive Officer USF, Parvez Iftikhar.

He said that the project aimed at expanding and upgrading the Low Vision and Rehabilitation center at Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital.

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