Corporate Social Responsibility

Environment
Corporate Social Responsibility

Education
Corporate Social Responsibility

Women Empowerment

RENEW INDIA INITIATIVE (RII)

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ReNew India Initiative is focussed on empowering communities and improving their quality of life through education and giving them means of livelihood in alignment with ReNew’s vision and mission. The program is based on three broad indicators of development: Human, Social and Natural capital.

As we move closer to the 2-degree Celsius threshold and rapidly use up the carbon budget, the adverse effects of climate change become more and more apparent, with anthropogenic activities exacerbating environmental degradation. The low-income communities and the marginalized face the greatest degree of climate risk, due to maximum exposure to the devastating impacts of climate change, be it on agriculture, livelihoods, health, water security, human rights, displacement and so on.

Among these communities, women and children are most vulnerable, and there is an urgent need for sustained solutions to safeguard them from these impending threats. Keeping gender parity and a brighter future for the youth in focus, building resilience against climate change within these communities becomes critical.

As a renewable energy company, our core business has positive cascading effects on various aspects of sustainable development, permeating right down to the last mile and empowering communities in rural areas where we have our operations. Our overarching goal is to act as a responsible corporate and arrest the worryingly rapid pace of climate change through well-planned initiatives focused on building resilient communities.

BOTTOM UP APPROCH FOR LOCAL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

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At ReNew, we work closely with local communities to create a positive impact on the communities in which we operate, both directly and indirectly. We strive to identify needs in local communities for our community development programs and have open and transparent dialogues with relevant stakeholders.

The process starts with undertaking a detailed Environment Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) for all potential projects. The exercise is aimed to assess and predict potential adverse social and environmental impacts and to develop suitable mitigation measures.  The outcome of the study helps the CSR team develop its broad framework for social responsibility initiatives which is followed by a detailed community need-assessment exercise to map the baseline data and community expectations.

ReNew has a adopted a robust planning process to design and implement its various social responsibility initiatives. Community consultation is an integral aspect of this process. At ReNew, social responsibility initiatives are designed through a bottom-up approach, keeping in mind macro-level socio-economic challenges that run through the length and breadth of the country.

A match of both of these, any social program that is implemented across ReNew’s areas of operations undergoes a formal community consultation. Key principles followed during community consultations are as follows:

    • Integrity – Every consultation is open and transparent.
    • Inclusive – Every consultation is inclusive from a stakeholder viewpoint to ensure that a full range of perspectives are included.
    • Responsive – Every consultation is in form of a dialogue to assess accurate Information

Following are the methods and approaches adopted towards community consultations:

    • Focussed group discussions
    • One-to-one interviews with key informant groups
    • Surveys

Stakeholder engagement is an integral element of the program planning process. It improves the understanding of local conditions and stakeholders’ concerns and is essential for identifying effective strategies for mitigating negative impacts.

Stakeholder strategy

Stakeholder Mode of engagement Outcome
Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) Consultation meetings, monthly planning and review meetings Plans for community development, monthly review and audit of CSR program
Local Government One-to-one meeting with district officials Effective and smooth implementation of CSR activities, communication of the CSR program at district level
Panchayats Frequent one-to-one meeting with Sarpanch, Gram Sevaks and other PRI members for effective implementation Convergence with government schemes, smooth implementation of CSR program
Local Communities Community level village meetings, Participatory Rural Appraisal for village mapping and need identification Identification of the needs of the community, bottoms up planning of CSR interventions
ReNew Business Teams Random field visits by business team members Effective monitoring of CSR programs ensuring gap analysis and continual improvement

At ReNew, there is a dedicated team which works in close conjunction with business teams to plan, develop, supervise, and monitor social development programmes.

The roles and responsibilities of the team Include:

Conducting need-assessment across areas of operations to ascertain community needs

Formulating the annual CSR plan as per business and community needs

Formulating the annual CSR budget in line with the activities identified

Implementing CSR programs across areas of operations

Monitoring and evaluating the programs on a timely basis

OUR FLAGSHIP PROGRAMS

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    Lighting Lives

Lighting Lives

The Lighting Lives program focusses on last mile electrification of schools with less than 3 hours of electricity through solar energy and transforming the delivery of education by establishing digital labs and working with students to shape up their minds for a cleaner and greener future. The aim is to ensure rural children have access to a modern, technology aided learning experience. The main objective of the program is to transform education through energy access and sensitize the youth towards the importance of using renewables. Through electrification of schools, ReNew has directly impacted the lives of many students by facilitating a better learning environment through electricity access, facilitating better education delivery through ICT, enhancing digital knowledge, and increasing learning levels and enrolment and decreasing drop-out rates.

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    Water ATM

Community-based water management

Improving access to clean drinking water is an important pillar of ReNew’s CSR program in the communities around its operations especially in the state of Rajasthan. In Rajasthan, ReNew is working closely with the communities to construct Taankas – a traditional rainwater harvesting technique, common to the arid regions around Jaisalmer. It is meant to provide drinking water for a single or a small group of families and is an important element of water security in the region. Construction of taankas has also reduced the burden on women and adolescent girls, who traditionally were responsible for fetching water for their families and had to walk miles to the nearest water point. The taankas have been constructed in arid regions of Rajasthan for providing water to marginalized families. ReNew has also de-silted 8 community lakes in Jaisalmer (Rajasthan) and Jath (Maharashtra) providing water to people across these two locations.

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    ReNew Women India Initiative (ReWIN)

ReNew Women India Initiative (ReWIN)

The ReNew Women India Initiative (ReWIN) involves creation of self-employment and social economy enterprises in rural India, targeting rural women with an entrepreneurial spirit. It has specific objectives of capacity-building, social empowerment and promoting entrepreneurship and consolidation of business projects to develop networks of rural women entrepreneurs, linked to SDG 5 on Gender Equality.

Edu-Hub

Another social responsibility initiative is the creation of Edu Hub, an innovative rural community centre for education, focusing on capacity-building efforts for different segments of the community. Depending on the needs of the local community, training modules are designed and training is imparted at the centre in conjunction with local subject specialists and Government agencies.

ReNew Scholarship for Exceptional Talent (ReSET)

India is a country with a population of 1.3 billion people and a distinct demographic dividend. Approximately 62% of our population falls under the working age group which makes the youth of our country the most important stakeholder in the journey of our economic growth. Despite this, the youth, especially at the bottom of the pyramid struggle to express and display their talents. The ReNew Scholarship for Exceptional Talent (ReSET) is a program launched in the year 2016 focussing on identifying young and aspiring underprivileged talents across different fields and giving them an opportunity and a platform to hone their skills to help them grow and pursue their ambitions in their field of choice.

EMPLOYEE VOLUNTEERING

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Employee Volunteerism forms an important part of all the activities undertaken by ReNew under the gamut of corporate social responsibility. At ReNew employees are encouraged to volunteer their time and talent in various CSR activities organized both at the corporate level as well as at the site level on a regular basis. Apart from these employees are made aware about various CSR initiatives undertaken by the organization through different internal communications.

In ReNew, we engage with a broad range of stakeholders – customers, employees, researchers, policy makers, regulators, investors, NGOs and local communities – to understand the sustainability themes that are most important to them and also for us.

Through detailed stakeholder consultation and materiality assessment, we identified an array of topics and issues which are critical to our business and we track our progress on these topics/issues throughout the year.

IMPACT STORIES

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At ReNew, we are accelerating India’s transition away from fossil fuels to a clean energy driven growth model. At the same time, we are also striving to positively transform lives in marginalized communities through our CSR initiatives such as Lighting Lives, ReNew Women India Initiative (ReWIN), Edu Hub, etc. These activities are aimed at empowering communities and especially women and youth so that they are economically independent and can lead a quality life. Read More

AWARDS

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  • CSR Journal Excellence Award 2021
  • ASSOCHAM (Southern Region) CSR and Sustainability Award 2021
  • S&P Global Platts Awards 2020 – CSR Program of the Year
  • Stevie Awards 2020 (Silver category) – CSR Program of the Year
  • Stevie Awards 2020 (Silver category) – COVID Relief Project
  • IHW Council Health Impact Awards 2020 – COVID Relief Project
CSR / Sustainability Committee Members

Mr. Sumant Sinha

Chairman

Mr. Michael Bruun

Member

Mr. Anuj Girotra

Member

  1. Formulate and recommend to the Board, a Corporate Social Responsibility policy which shall indicate the activities to be undertaken by the Company as specified in Schedule VII of Companies Act, 2013
  2. Recommend the amount of expenditure to be incurred on the activities year-on-year
  3. Monitor the Corporate Social Responsibility policy of the Company from time to time
  4. Review the progress on the annual corporate social responsibility plan and expenditure
Policy / Annual Report

Policy

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FY 2020-21

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FY 2018-19

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FY 2021-22

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FY 2019-20

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FY 2017-18

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