CHENNAI: To improve the quality of the government schools around the Ford India plant at Marailamalainagar, the company launched its ‘Happy Schools Programme’ at the CSI School, Melrosapuram, beginning its Global Week of Caring.
Volunteers from the company usually spend a week every year teaching underprivileged school children mathematics, English and science and organising extracurricular activities for them. This year, to take it a step further, Ford took up this project in 21 schools across Chennai to address the gaps that these schools face in infrastructural and academic support.
Ford identified and tied up with 11 NGOs in Chennai to help them in the project, a part of their Corporate Social Responsibility. “Community service is an important part of Ford, and education has always been one of our concerns. Our founder Henry Ford said that a business that only made profit was a poor business,” says Nigel Harris, president of Ford India, encouraging the students to work hard. “We hope some of you may join Ford as engineers some time in the future.”
They aim to look beyond curriculum, into sports and cultural activities. “We even have a lab-on-wheels, a mobile science laboratory for children to see experiments,” says Balasundaram R, the executive director of manufacturing.
The volunteers from Ford tried to connect with the children by enacting a skit with impersonations of popular Tamil actors to tell them how this initiative would help them, and another group performed ‘Villu Paatu’ to give them some advice on how to read more and take the right influences from their surroundings.
The CSI School’s infrastructure improvement has already been done with building renovation and planting of saplings. This year, the students will participate in activities including medial awareness, waste segregation and pollution control.
These activities, and others like building of toilets and sanitary napkin incinerators will be carried out in Sanand and Gurgaon too, and conserving of water resources will be given an especial focus.