“The University and Higher Educational Institutions in India should focus on adoption of seven principles of Empowerment of Global Compact Network India (GCNI), which comprise of gender equality, fair treatment to women, health safety & well-being of women, education / training / research on women, enterprise development with women, promoting equality through women participation at all levels and measuring progress of women empowerment interventions. These practices will create triple bottom line effect by improving eco-system, benefitting committee and boosting economic productivity” said Shri Pooran C Pandey, Executive Director, GCNI, New Delhi, while addressing the academic leaders, faculty and students at a joint meeting of CMR University and GCNI at CMR University, Bangalore.
Mr. Pandey further highlighted various initiatives of United Nations Global Compact, an initiative started by the then UN Secretary General Mr. Kofi Anan in the year 2000. Today the movement boasts of more than 8700 participating organizations from over 130 countries. He mentioned about successful development interventions done in Gujarat, Ethiopia and many countries. Mr. Pandey elaborated with live examples on how contribution of women have built strong economics in Germany, Brazil and Bangladesh to put community and society on growth path, wherein the women are treated in just and fair manner to contribute for improved quality of life. He emphasized that “If you educate a girl child, you will educate the nation”. He concluded by saying that ‘the working together of Universities of academic institutions with corporate, industries, NGOs, SMEs can create ‘wholesome value to all the stakeholders’ and GCNI’s endeavor is to enhance this network of development interventions’.
Dr Anand K Joshi, vice chancellor, CMRU pointed out, “The University has maximum number of women employees with more than 50 % women in administration, 53% in academics, 45% as non teaching staff. Nearly 70% of students in the post graduate programmes are girls and 30% of students enrolled in undergraduate programmes are girls as per the norms prescribed by the Human Resources Development Ministry.”
Dr Sabitha Ramamurthy, Chancellor, CMRU, urged the students to participate in the social development processes and to observe the neighbouring localities. “Corporate responsibility and sustainability is essential as the students are future entrepreneurs being the youngest generation of India. It is important for students to look around and observe the life patterns and participate in making changes to the society. The activities of the GCNI have been included in the curriculum to ensure that the students are on par with the contribution to society,” observed Dr Sabitha.
CMRU, is one among the 535 leading universities, business and management academic institutions from more than 80 countries across the world who are signatories of the PRME. As a signatory to the UN’s PRME initiative, CMRU will offer two mandatory subjects in ‘corporate social responsibility and sustainability’ and ‘corporate ethics and regulations and governance in business enterprises’ in each PG and UG programme.
