Social Bridges is Closing Down
Social Bridges has been the first phase of an experimental project. The project has successfully completed it’s first phase with significant impact. The closing down of the blog doesn’t mean that we are putting an end to our efforts. From hereon, we want to focus more on direct action; reaching out to common public and other stakeholders and doing field work. The blog was initiated with a six month map in mind, our next step is to sign up more partners and take the discussion on CSR to the next level. Beyond this post, the blog will become in-active, although the existing content will still be available to all audience for commenting and reference.
The content will also be accessible from Telenor Pakistan’s website in a few days, there might be some not-so-regular additions to the content depending on the work that we’ll take on. We’ll keep our readers updated about our future plans.
Social Bridges – a joint venture of Telenor Pakistan and CDF Software – has completed six successful months. The initial purpose of starting this blog was to encourage open discussions between the community, non-profit organizations and the corporate sector. Generally, the corporate sector has been reluctant to come out and openly discuss and debate the Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. In our quest for a partner, Telenor Pakistan was the only company which came forward and took the bold decision of working with us on the venture, although a number of corporate sector entities were contacted.
We started with the following mission statement
As Pakistan’s economy has grown, several sectors have boomed at the same time - media, advertising, banking, finance, telecom, and others. Consumers and people have not only enabled these sectors to grow immensely, but have allowed corporations to touch and influence their lives in profound ways.
Corporations, their products and services, and the way they are connecting with society can affect how people behave in their lives; can affect cultural norms; can affect societal values; and can be a beacon of guidance to society as it heads into the future.
Everyone from farmers, chai wallas, doctors, educationalists, customer service professionals and more have seen dramatic, disruptive change in their lifestyles because of an increase in communications technologies and microlending.
But are corporations aware of the high standards of responsibility that a socially-aware society is now beginning to place on them? If companies can actually change the way we think about the future, the way we speak, how we respect one another and come closer, do those companies even know how they should be thinking or planning about their social responsibilities?
Can they find an actual business incentive to do so?
Social Bridges aims to answer these questions. We are bringing together leaders from corporations, MNCs, academic institutes, NGOs, government bodies and even international experts together in one place here on the Social Bridges platform. What this means is that YOU can now have direct access to speak to them, discuss the realities of their work with them and together this community can explore the right path of CSR activities that corporations can adopt!
We aspired to bring all the stakeholders on one platform and we did manage to do well in this regard. Our basic aim was to engage all stakeholders through deep and thoughtful discussions about social responsibility and ethical business practices. To cover this agenda, Social Bridges conducted interviews of many corporate sector executives to get to know about their companies’ practices and social investments. Tough questions were asked and important information was extracted. This also allowed our readers to question the credibility of any company which was not doing good or had some ‘dubious’ operating procedures.
The education part of the venture where we ran detailed pieces on the local and global CSR policies and changing mindsets, the new green paradigm and its impact on Pakistan and sustainable development kept our readers glued to this blog.
Social Bridges also introduced many world renowned CSR and sustainability experts to common Pakistanis by conducting a series of interviews. We involved them by asking question with local context of a developing country and sought solutions; which they happily provided. A couple of them are quite eager to even work on ground for us, if the conditions allow and there are chances.
Social Bridges was one of the most popular and regularly updated blogs in the social and green sector. This resulted in some popular blogs linking to our posts and some renowned social and green sector person coming and commenting on our site. Some of our posts were also featured in the research work of international social scientists and activists. AllThingsReconsiderd and CorporateResponsibilityNet – two major CSR portals of the world - also cross-posted our articles.
The traffic and attention to this blog has increased sharply during last few months.
Thank you very much all of you for your continued patronage and regular contributions. We are glad to see that so many amongst us have the common vision for sustainable, robust and socially responsible business practices.
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