Getting Serious about CSR Go back »

2007-10-24 | Shanghai

Getting Serious about CSR
Shanghai Daily, 24th October 2007

A new Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative from the EU Chamber is allowing expats to give back to the local community by assisting with important, life changing projects for children who are blind, those who are deaf and the autistic.

Corporate social responsibility has become a big issue in Shanghai, where business is booming and companies want to give something back to those less fortunate.

Now, a company especially geared to arranging projects for companies to do exactly that, is organizing a community involvement day where people can work with blind, deaf or autistic children to facilitate better communication and understanding.

The CSR & Company community involvement day has been organized for members of the European Union Chamber of Commerce and anyone else who wants to get involved.

"It's a program initiated by the EU Chamber as a response to the growing demand of its member companies for greater involvement in community projects. And it is a symbol of a growing social awareness and sense of social responsibility among citizens of Shanghai, and a new relationship between companies and society," says Corinne Hua, a CSR consultant and one of the event organizers.

"It's also a great way for expats and local people who are benefiting from the economic boom in Shanghai to give back to less privileged people in the society they live in."

Organized for November 3, the program is designed to enable volunteers to help three types of children, those with hearing disabilities, visual disabilities and autism, to communicate better with the outside world.

"As well as bringing gifts for the children and donations for their institutions, this program also involves the children in carefully designed activities, based on the children's special needs," the British native continues.

Volunteers will learn how to interact and communicate with handicapped children and gain the satisfaction of making a small difference in these children's lives. The children will experience the joy of interacting with the volunteers through the activities.

"They will gain knowledge and self-esteem through information sharing and the sense of being respected," Hua explains.

Split into three teams, the first team will be involved with a drawing competition at Shanghai Zoo with Children from Shanghai School for the Deaf.

"Volunteers will gather at school for instruction in simple sign language. They will present their gifts before being paired up with children to go to the zoo together. They will choose a spot to do a picture together and there will be a picture competition at end of day."

The second team will be helping with "Learning about Europe" at Shanghai School for Blind Children, the 39-year-old continues.

Volunteers will give a brief presentation in Chinese about the countries they are from, using some visuals (video, large scale photos) for those children with partial sight.

Volunteers or partially sighted children describe in Chinese the visuals to the non-sighted children (although for volunteers' Mandarin skills are not essential to participate).

"The children will then be asked to describe differences between foreigners and Chinese people either through partial sight or by touching foreigners' faces and there will be a discussion of differences and similarities."

Finally, team three will work with the Fountain School for Autistic Children.

"Games and performances with the children and the faculty and volunteers, children and parents will work together to make wall paintings."

To ensure volunteers are prepared for these activities, Shanghai Xintu Community Health Promotion Center (www.xintu.org) will facilitate, one-day activities and provide basic training to volunteers.

"Volunteers will be offered training relevant to the group they have joined: one, in basic sign language. Two, working with blind children and three on how to communicate and interact with autistic children," says Hua.

Explaining about the children that the volunteers will meet she says:

"Many of them can only communicate through sign language, which restricts their ability to communicate with others, so some alternative channels must be found like communicating with them through writing, drawing and body movement."

Children with visual disabilities can't observe people's facial expression, gestures or other body language.

"Their information on the outside world is essentially limited to what they can hear and touch, while children with autism suffer from a psychological development disorder. They lack social skills and have a limited scope of attention and movement. They intentionally avoid any form of interaction with people, and mostly live in their own world."

The Special Olympics played a very significant role in raising understanding of and respect for intellectually challenged people in Shanghai, Hua finishes.

"However, this event will give people living locally a great opportunity to learn more about this marginalized community."