PGHH_AR_2020

Annual Report 2019-20 8 Procter & Gamble Hygiene and Health Care Limited CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (‘CSR’) Since its foundation, giving back to the communities has been an integral part of your Company’s purpose and values. Our CSR strategy supported by two pillars – P&G Shiksha and Timely Disaster Relief. P&G Shiksha provides access to holistic education for underprivileged children through 360-degree educational interventions and your Company’s disaster relief aims to provide comforts to those affected by natural disasters. Your Company donated over 1 lakh sanitary pads to women and girls impacted by cyclone Amphan and supported more than 2,500 families affected by floods in Maharashtra. Your Company’s signature corporate sustainability program P&G Shiksha has focused on three main areas – improving education infrastructure, empowering marginalized girls through education and improving learning outcomes. Till date, the P&G group in India has supported over 2,300 schools (+200 since last year) across the country that will impact the lives of over 20 lakh (+300,000 since last year) children. Along with our NGO partner Round Table India (RTI), we have focused on building and refurbishing school buildings, constructing classrooms, building playgrounds and improving health and hygiene facilities for children at schools. In line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in partnership with NGO Save the Children, we are providing quality education to girls by enhancing the education infrastructure and the quality of education available to them. We are also providing smart classroom technology across schools for interactive audio-visual based learning. A key area that we have focused on is ‘improving learning outcomes in children’. Within this, we have concentrated our efforts in bridging learning gaps through on-ground remedial learning interventions, strengthening early childhood education and implementing software-based adaptive learning solutions across government schools. Along with our NGO partner Pratham Education Foundation, we are bridging the expected and existing learning gaps in children through on-ground remedial learning interventions. During the Financial Year, we reached out to more than 50,000 children across 6 states in India and observed remarkable improvement in their learning levels. At the end of the intervention, more than 70% students were able to read as per their expected learning level compared to less than 25% at the beginning of the intervention. Through our early childhood education program in partnership with Pratham Education Foundation, we aim to develop motor and cognitive skills in children thereby setting them up for a fast-paced growth as they start school. The results were overwhelming, 85% children in the intervention groups had competent motor skills (ability to draw, hold a pencil, colour within a shape, join dots etc.) versus 42% in the comparison groups. We have also partnered with the state government in Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, and Rajasthan to build capability of Anganwadi workers and mobilize volunteers from the community to assist with pre-school activities. Through this program, we reached out to more than 4,000 Anganwadi’s and pre-schools impacting more than 38,000 children. P&G Shiksha also partnered with Educational Initiatives (EI) to implement Mindspark , a computer- based adaptive learning tool to remediate learning gaps in students across schools in Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The tool integrates pedagogy, teacher instruction and a learning management system to assess a student’s learning level and develop a customized learning path for each one of them. The program has been implemented in 130+ government schools where more than 28,000 students learned with understanding using Mindspark . Post the intervention, the learning levels among students using Mindspark improved two-fold compared to the control group. The tool also provides teachers with information on the progress and learning levels of students which is used for effective classroom management and instruction. Your Company continued to impact the communities around its plants in a holistic manner throughout the Financial Year. At Goa, we support Matruchhaya, a home for the orphan and abandoned, helping them build health and hygiene amenities and support basic educational facilities. Schools around India temporarily closed as a preventive measure to contain the spread of COVID-19, affecting millions of students, particularly from underprivileged communities. To facilitate continuity of learning, your Company partnered with Pratham to pilot newer platforms of learning. We connected with students via phone calls, SMSs, video calls and WhatsApp to encourage them to continue learning at home. For children in their formative years, we encouraged mothers to engage their children in simple hands-on activities focused on building their child’s cognitive and language skills.