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Corporate Social Responsibility at Intel®
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Next up in CSR report localization: Intel India

Suzanne_Fallender
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As I mentioned in a post last week, we're in the process of rolling out our localized CSR reports at different sites, countries and regions around the world. Just as my colleague Revital shared her thoughts on The Value of Centralized Localization, I asked my colleague Sonia who manages CSR for South Asia to share her perspective on CSR reporting and her process for making the report relevant for local stakeholders.

Here's Sonia's take on the topic of CSR report localization:

"We recently completed our Intel India CSR report, which includes key highlights from what Intel is doing around the world, but also highlights the specific achievements we've made in India - in reducing our environmental impact, engaging our employees, and contributing to the improvement of education and local communities in the country. In my role working on CSR for South Asia, I'm very proud of what we've accomplished in the past year - from rainwater harvesting to recognition for our work to promote energy efficiency to our investment social entrepreneurship endeavors. A few highlights from this year's report:

- We discovered the use of harvested rainwater water for cooling tower make-up in India which will help us to harvest and use an additional 14 million liters of rainwater per year. This will also eliminate municipal water use from our process cooling equivalent to the water consumption of approximately 100 homes in Bangalore every year.

- We executed 15 energy conservation projects in India in 2009, which saved 750,000 KWH of electricity. In addition, our Data Centre upgrade from low power density to high power density will reduce the facility energy consumption by 12,00,000 KwH per annum, once the data centre is fully populated.

- Intel has helped train over 1.2 million teachers across India through the Intel Teach program since 1999 and our science initiatives and competitions have touched more than 1.5 million students.

- We sponsored the India Innovation Pioneers Challenge (IIPC) in which participants developed a host of solutions for socioenvironmental issues ranging all the way from a novel alternative to difficult intravenous access in medical emergencies, development of a special wheelchair for children suffering from cerebral palsy to developing a good quality and cheap acoustic material from carpet industry waste.

- Intel employees worked with a local NGO on a multi faceted program to train young people in the community to become peer educators on HIV/AIDS prevention. More than 45,000 youths--mainly from slums, schools, and colleges in Bangalore--have benefited from the training since its launch last year.

- Responding to the devastating flood in Karnataka, Intel decided to take a longer term developmental view of rebuilding shattered lives sustainably and announced a program to rehabilitate over 4,000 livelihoods in Bagalkot.

In India, we have been able to contribute significantly in the areas of education, environment and corporate citizenship as part of our CSR activities. A major part of our success has been driven by our employees - our employees are extremely committed and passionate about giving back to the society. They 'assume responsibility', and engage in a host of volunteering activities with an endeavor to make a difference to the communities where we live and work. To see some of our employees in action and more on our CSR initiatives, you can also view this recent video.

One important thing about the report is that finishing the report itself is just the beginning - the second step is using the report in our dialogue and outreach with our many stakeholders. Typically, in the past our CSR report outreach had been focused mainly on academics, industry associations and ministries of IT and Human Resource Development (education) in some states of India. Last year, we broadened our engagement to also include NGOs and other technical bodies. This year, we did a massive exercise of re-mapping opinion leaders and policymakers nationwide across all states in India across multiple domains and ministries that we hadn't traditionally been reaching out to. This was driven by the rationale that government officials change often between ministries, and also that the entire gamut of work we do under CSR has a much wider stakeholder impact and has important cross-linkages. We of course also share the report with our most critical stakeholder - our employees. While we continue to deepen our CSR initiatives, we felt it was also critical that we enhanced the outreach to effectively articulate our work and to get more feedback and input from our stakeholders."

About the Author
Suzanne Fallender is Intel’s Director of Corporate Responsibility. In this role, she collaborates with key stakeholders across the company to integrate corporate responsibility concepts into company strategies, policies, public reporting, and stakeholder engagement activities to advance Intel’s corporate responsibility leadership and create positive social impact and business value. Suzanne leads a team of experienced professionals who engage with internal and external groups to review Intel’s corporate responsibility performance and to identify new opportunities to apply Intel’s technology and expertise to address social and environmental challenges. The team also works closely with Intel’s investor relations and corporate governance groups to drive an integrated outreach strategy with investors on governance and corporate responsibility issues. Suzanne has more than 20 years of experience in the field of corporate responsibility and socially responsible investment. During her time at Intel, Suzanne has held a number of corporate responsibility-related roles, including leading programs empowering girls and women through technology. Prior to Intel, Suzanne served as Vice President at Institutional Shareholder Services where she managed the firm’s socially responsible investing division. Suzanne holds an M.B.A. from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University and a B.A. from Trinity College in Hartford, CT. She has served on a number of leading industry advisory boards and committees on sustainability and corporate responsibility over the past decade and currently is a member of the Net Impact Board of Directors. Follow Suzanne on Twitter at @sfallender.