Community

Working with communities is an integral part of Vedanta’s sustainability strategy and the development of our medium and long-term plans and strategies. Our unique approach and our ability to work collaboratively has been an important element of our license to operate and long-term success.

Outreach & Impact: 2005- 2010

  • Strategic focus on 1,001 villages and 2.5 million people in 8 States in India and 4 townships in Zambia
  • Literacy and education initiatives for more than 120,000 children and adult illiterates
  • Computer Literacy program in 300 schools and 315 literacy centers covering more than 140,000 students,
  • 27 company run schools and a post graduate college for girls reaching out to 16,000 students
  • Healthcare services provided to 4.2 million people
  • 18 company run hospitals & health posts
  • 2,60,000 children in 2,952 schools covered under the midday meal program through 8 centralized kitchens in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Orissa
  • 1,850 Vedanta Bal Chetna Anganwadi Centers covering 83,500 children
  • Work in progress for a) 350 bedded Vedanta Cancer Hospital & Research Centre at Raipur in Chhattisgarh & b) Vedanta Hindustan Zinc Heart Hospital at Udaipur in Rajasthan
  • 8,100 acres of land brought under cultivation & watershed covering 19,123 farmers
  • Veterinary services benefitting 320,000 cattle
  • 25,000 women enrolled in 1,800 Self Help Groups with a cumulative savings of Rs. 63.4 million
  • 75 villages covered under the Integrated Village Development Program
  • CSR Advisory Board in Orissa comprising of eminent personalities to guide and periodically assess CSR performance
  • CSR investment over 5 years INR 325.1 crore (73.18 million USD)

Armed with a team of 62 full time development personnel, 170 community coordinators, who are natural leaders from the same communities and 100 NGO partners; our endeavors have been a tremendous success and have paid rich dividends

Our Focus:

Sustainable development for us is an integrating concept embracing economic, social and the environmental sustainability.

Social Investment – Health, Education & Livelihood

Bio Investment – Water Harvesting, Agriculture & Social Forestry

Health

Community involvement and collaborations are cornerstones of public health action. Human health in its broadest sense of physical, mental and spiritual well being is to a great extent dependent on the access of the citizen to a healthy environment.

Vedanta recognizes the importance of health in the socio- economic development and the efficacious role it can play in improving the quality of life of the people. Our approach is both curative and preventive with a resolve to institutionalize positive behaviour towards health in the communities. We partner with various Government & Non Government agencies in implementing National health programs for communicable and non communicable diseases.

Total sanitation concept, safe drinking water and immunization are the key initiatives under our preventive approach. Behavioral change of a million people on the issue of HIV AIDS has been a key driver in our African operations. Our calendared mobile health clinics and awareness camps go a long way in preventing outbreak of diseases in the communities. For deeper penetration, our ‘health posts’ render primary health services in remote tribal places. For children in the age group of 3 to 6 years, the group has a focused national program in collaboration with ICDS, targeting to reach a million children by 2010. This program has considerable support from the community youth, which ensures its sustainability after the phase out stage.

Our group operates 18 hospitals extending health services to 4.2 million people including employees and their families. This includes health care, diagnostic and treatment services. Regular features of our special health camps include surgeries for eye cataract, artificial limbs and family planning. . Under sectoral intervention we included cancer detection through Vedanta mobile cancer vans in our curative care portfolio, this year. The group is also in the process of establishing 350 bed Vedanta Cancer Hospital. The project is a collaborative venture between the Government of Chhattisgarh and Vedanta Medical Research Foundation (VMRF). The hospital will not only bring cancer care of international standards but will also incorporate a cancer research centre and an academic institution. The fully functional hospital will house 300 beds and 62 additional ICU beds. Currently, two mobile cancer detection vans fully equipped with ultra modern equipments to screen suspected patients in remote villages are functional. In the 26 camps conducted in 423 villages covering 23,589 populace, 2,319 suspected patients were registered of which 129 were diagnosed as positive, 16 were referred to BALCO hospital and 29 to the Raipur Government Medical Hospital

The Hindustan Zinc Ltd. (HZL) Cardiology centre- a 60 bed tertiary level care, has been upgraded to a 100 bed Heart Hospital with RNT Medical College as its associate hospital. The existing 1.5 units will be doubled to 3 units with 2 cardiology units and 1 cardio-thoracic unit. Upgrading the Cardiology Centre will also lead to an increase in the number of courses and doctors’ training seats, bringing it at par with national level hospitals. The increased capacity will also enhance the number of patients from 6584 to 15,609 bed days, with patients from Udaipur to Jaipur on one end and Udaipur to Baroda and Ahmedabad on the other. The upgraded Vedanta Heart Hospital will provide comprehensive health care solutions to all sections of the society.

Education

Education is indispensable for development and sustenance of the society.

At Vedanta, it is embedded in the core values of all our Group companies, to take every effort to facilitate imparting of quality education to all target groups. The basic approach entails partnering with Government and Non Government Agencies for the implementation of need based initiatives.

We have Child Care Centres running across operations, aiming at pre-school education and addressing mal-nutrition. Schools have been provided with basic infrastructure facilities to support congenial learning environment. We are also establishing educational institutions under public-private-partnership,. We are proactively engaged in establishment of infrastructure facilities and imparting training to children and teachers, for promoting computer literacy,. Imparting functional literacy among rural women is another significant area of contribution through Non Formal Education centres.

Mid Day Meal is another key area where the Group has actively engaged itself. 8 centralized High-tech kitchens catering to 2,60,000 students of primary and middle schools, have been established in the operational areas of HZL, VAL, Lanjigarh and BALCO . These kitchens serve high quality nutritious food and have helped immensely in improving school attendance and retention.

Sustainable Livelihood

We are committed to raise quality of life of the communities through meaningful engagement with the communities. We aim to empower the communities economically through our various initiatives. Our engagement in Farm and Non-Farm activities has given the marginalized section of society, an opportunity to enhance their income.

The basic approach is to carve out interventions which are technically feasible, financially viable, ecologically sustainable, and culturally acceptable.

Our approach to livelihood is based on a three-pronged household strategy: 1. empowerment of women through self help groups, 2. skill enhancement of the youth and, 3. reviving the traditional vocation through innovations in farm-based sustainability.

Our Group companies invest in making Community Based Organizations (CBO) (for instance, Self Help Groups (SHG), Co-operatives, etc.) economically independent, with an emphasis on using local resources for livelihood creation. Skill building and promoting entrepreneurship for gainful employment have always been accorded priority at Vedanta. Women SHGs have been trained in different vocations for livelihood generation. Our Group companies are actively engaged in imparting trade specialized training to unemployed youth and helping farmers make agriculture a viable and preferred vocation

We believe in restoring natural systems and improving natural resource management practices at the grass root level; a strategy central to eliminating poverty at the rural level. Watershed management, Wadi development, Cattle breed improvement and Cash crop farming are some of the exemplary initiatives undertaken in the farm sector. The integration of agriculture with land-water management and eco-system conservation is essential for the rural livelihood generation schemes, both at the community level and the individual level. Bio- mass is and will for a long time continue to be, a major source of fuel and energy especially in the rural areas. Vedanta recognizes & supports this concept and has integrated it in our sustainable programs.

Our approach to bio investment and natural resource management (such as traditional ponds, water harvesting through watershed area, development of green belts with massive plantation, waste management and recycling) has enabled us to revive the institutional mechanism and the spirit of the community management inherent in those systems. Land reclamation and massive plantations in land fill area are inbuilt in our mining practices across the units.

Integrated Village Development Programme

The Integrated Village Development Programme (IVDP) is our flagship project. The programme’s fundamental objective is to provide a conducive environment for holistic development of the villages for inclusive growth. The plan includes infrastructural support, health, education, environmental, livelihood, energy and human resource need of the local people. It also encourages participation of people for collective management of their resources. It includes:

  • Community mobilization and engagement for bottom up planning
  • Independent survey and inventory by an external agency
  • Periodic meetings with the local government and community on the action plan
  • Collective action in education, sanitation, gender bias, livelihood
  • Backward dissemination of the plan to the Ward through Panchayat/Gram Sabha.
  • Monitoring evaluation and communication on progress

Social Audits

In 2008, we conducted a social assessment across all our locations. Observations of our auditor - KPMG on Social Assessment were -

Progress: Vedanta’s CSR strategy has made significant progress since its inception in a formalized manner, three to four years ago. A large number of community-level investments have been made in education, health, livelihood development, micro-finance and infrastructure (water supply, roads and buildings) in villages across Business Units. Vedanta’s High Impact Projects (stand-alone projects backed by a larger investment) are showing a positive impact at scale across the Group, most notably the Vedanta Bal Chetna Anganwadi Project (Child Care Centres) and Computer Education project.

People: Vedanta’s progress on CSR has been greatly assisted by the dedicated and well-resourced CSR teams in place at each Business Unit. Recognizing the need to understand communities before making investments, Vedanta’s CSR teams include social development professionals, able to bridge the Company- Community perspective.

Similarly, we were assessed by other social organizations in Rajasthan and Orissa to assess the impact brought through our intensive approach - the Integrated Village Development Program.

The extracts of the audits by ORG-New Delhi for HZL and AISD-Ranchi for VAL, Lanjigarh highlight:

HZL Facts

  • Intensive planning for 32 remote villages in 4 districts around business operations
  • Baseline assessment undertaken in 2006
  • Three Year rolling plan implemented
  • Focus on education, health, sanitation and livelihood
  • Institutionalized community based organizations in these 32 villages

Impact

  • 72% growth in basic services and amenities in these 32 villages
  • Focus on nutrition of children aged 3-14 years (Anganwadi and Elementary education) with an outreach of more than 2.0 lac children in 4 districts
  • 40% improvement in women participation in development initiatives through institution building and self help groups
  • Improvement in income level to Rs 8000 per month after undertaking vocational training among 72% targeted families.
  • Empowered 215 women Self Help Groups encompassing 3400 memberships
  • Village development committees capacitated to carry forward the development affairs and ensure sustainability of the outcomes.

VAL, Lanjigarh Facts

  • In 2004, VAL, Lanjigarh rehabilitated and resettled 118 families from three villages keeping the fabric of their tradition and culture intact
  • Post ITI training, 76 youths from the displaced families were employed with the company, earning approximately INR 1, 80,000 per annum, 3–4 times their income before advent of VAL
  • 53 villages of Lanjigarh Block have extensive CSR interventions
  • MHU provides primary health service to 32,000+ people in partnership with the District Health Department
  • 38 Child Care Centres, 105 VBCA’s with an enrollment of 12,000+ children.
  • 2 villages electrified under project Ujala
  • Livelihood witnessed shift from subsistence farming to cash crop and multiple cropping.

Impact Assessment report of AISD states quality of life has vividly improved, during the period (2004-08):

  • IMR reduced from 200 to 75 per thousand live births
  • Child malnutrition down from 58% to 31%
  • Immunization increased from 35% to 71%
  • Malarial death dropped from 80% to 20%
  • School Drop-out rate down from 70% to 20%
  • School attendance increased from 45% to 95%
  • Farm man days employment increased from 120 to 250 days
  • Surface irrigation increased 35% through stream diversion method;
  • More than 750 acres of land under vegetable cultivation
  • Crop failure reduced nearly 50% due to improved cultivation techniques, plant protection
  • Roads, drains, tube-wells, enabled communication, hygienic sanitation and potable water for 50,000+ people