On Corporate Social Responsibility

I’m finally done with the Annual Report! It looks rather nice, I think. I used some of my own photographs, in it, including the one with a beetle eating bread. Anyway, click here to download our Annual Report for the academic year 2007/2008. I’ve left the bleeding in because I like a little bit of raw construction… and it’s tedious to remove. ("Bleeding" is the border around the document that printers chop off when they send it to print. I’ve no idea why it’s called that.)

All in all, it’s been a pretty good year. I even have some confidence that we now have a somewhat stable core of members, which is something we’ve never had before. I’m really heartened by it. We can now go on to do even more substantial things!

Also, I must say, we welcome feedback and ideas from anyone. Mail us at nus.csrsm@gmail.com to do so or just to talk to us or even simply to say hi. Have a good day, everybody! 

This comes a little late, but at least it’s here now. Our Annual Report can be found here. It is downloadable as a PDF file.

I think we made some headway last year in introducing CSR into NUS. Not much headway, but still some. At least now there is wider awareness of the acronym "CSR". The way I see it, there are a number of problems why it is so difficult to ppopularize this and other ideas.

1. Students are extremely busy with studies, work and what little personal lives they have left.

2. After so much studying and working, they want to relax, not read about more ideas.

3. There is not enough free time in the NUS calendar to allow students to explore things other than what’s in their modules.

4. There are too many activity groups in NUS vying for the tiny community’s attention.

5. Many students are materialistic, so unless they stand to gain from an idea, they’ll not want to waste time on it.

How do we go about solving these problems? I’m thinking of getting internships for the Movement’s members, asking companies, certain government agencies and NGO’s to let us try implementing CSR and business strategies for them (helps them and gives us practice), and also getting us into a position to organise sharing and networking sessions for companies. These will allow our members to have practical experience and expand the individual’s network, which I think are what students nowadays want.

Another idea is to make things more fun, but I can’t think how CSR can be made fun. 

I am also in the process of getting as many groups in NUS as possible to come together to make an on-line calendar of events wherein we project all our events for the year and so be able to see where there is too much competition or chances for collaboration. That would lessen rivalry, hopefully.

Maybe one day, we can get credits in our modules for doing such CSR activities. That would be great. But that’s kind of a far-off wish at the moment.

Well, if there are any ideas floating around out there, do tell us about them. We are always seeking to overcome our challenges and improve. 

Apologies for the absence - the examinations have been sucking away all available time and spirit.

We’re on our way back to providing more news, articles and commentaries. Stay tuned.

Welcome to On Corporate Social Responsibility!

This blog is run by members of the Corporate Social Responsibility Student Movement, a youth organisation in the National University of Singapore.

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