Talk about making history!  SMU students made a clean sweep of all three top awards at the CDL-Singapore Compact Young CSR Leader’s Award 2014.  The competition, which is into its fourth edition, is a case-study competition which provides opportunities for youths to put CSR concepts into practice by proposing feasible CSR strategies for companies.  This year’s contest attracted 50 teams from various local educational institutions, its largest number of entries ever.

Participating teams were matched with one of 10 participating companies of their choice, and had submitted their CSR proposals for these companies in April 2014; 10 teams were then shortlisted for the final stage of the competition, where they were attached to the respective companies for the opportunity to fine-tune their proposals for the final round of judging.

Clearly standing out and impressing the judges with their refreshing and practical CSR ideas were three teams from SMU – Team Clover, Team A.C.M.E and Team Tribus, who walked away with the first, second and third prizes respectively.

Ms Esther An, Chief Sustainability Officer, City Developments Limited, and a final judge at the Competition, said, “City Developments Limited (CDL) and Singapore Compact have been organising the Young CSR Leaders Award for four years.  I am delighted to witness not only a growing interest by students in this area but also moved by the level of passion and knowledge on the topic shown by the students.”

“SMU made history when their student teams made a clean sweep of the three top prizes this year.  All the judges, including myself, were impressed with the proposals by the winning teams as the students clearly demonstrated that they have a sound understanding of CSR.  More importantly, they were able to effectively apply inventive yet practical solutions to address the CSR issues faced by the company,” she added.

Team Clover, which walked away with the grand prize, comprised Shanna Xu Jiaqi (4^th year, business), Chen Jianing (4^th year, economics) and Stephanie Tan Ming Min (4^th year, business).

[Photo: Stephanie Tan (centre), representing Team Clover, receiving the top prize of $5,000 and the winner's shield from Singapore Compact President Mr Kwek Leng Joo and Guest-of-Honour Minister Lawrence Wong at the opening of the 2014 International Singapore Compact CSR Summit.]

“We chose to work with Fagerdala Singapore Pte Ltd, a protective packaging solutions company,” said Shanna.  Fagerdala produces mainly 100% polyethylene foams which are recyclable and earth-friendly.  The company wanted to renew its approach in re-engaging their internal stakeholders and rebranding themselves to their customers and the general public.

In their winning entry, Shanna and her team-mates tackled these two objectives by proposing a structured, four-part CSR campaign called ‘Fagerdala Cares’, which encompasses recycling, empowerment, development and health initiatives.  Their proposed campaign enables the company to address the welfare and development of Fagerdala’s target audiences, and to attract more strategic partnerships which are aligned with the company’s growth objectives.

Shanna attributed their success in part to the diversity of her team.  Jianing is an Economics student with a second major in finance, while Stephanie is a business student with a double major in strategic management and marketing; Shanna herself is doing a double-degree in business and economics.

“In some sense, while we are from different disciplines, our majors/degrees overlap, so we see a case from different points of views and have different skill-sets to tackle it,” she said.

Shanna and her team members got to know each other through the SMU Gourmet Club.  “Our first stint together was an SME consulting project under the UOB-SMU Asian Enterprise Institute.  We found that we clicked in many ways – especially in terms of work ethics and personality.  Since our last project ended, we wanted to do something else together, perhaps another project where we can apply what we’ve learnt in class to real cases.  This opportunity came up and I’m glad we took up the challenge,” said Shanna.

The second and third prizes were awarded to: Team A.C.M.E., which comprised Caleb Khoo (2nd year, economics), Elaine Goh (2nd year, law), Alvin Neo (2nd year, accountancy); and Team Tribus, comprising Jovyne Chua Qiuling (3rd year, social sciences), Jacob Ma Jiajun (3rd year, economics) Ng Yu Hang (3rd year, social sciences), Pamela Suzanne Lim Yin Kuan (3rd year, social sciences) and Subir Roy (4th year, social sciences).

Team A.C.M.E. developed for Swiber Holdings Ltd, an offshore oil and gas company with global operations and a multi-national employee base, a CSR strategy around the company’s values and spirit, focussing on skills, training and education.  The team also developed their own Model CSR Framework and metric system to help the company craft its CSR strategy.  They also proposed two programmes based on the framework – Swiber Colours, which focused on staff involvement in community service projects, and Swiber Future, a talent acquisition programme for the poor and underprivileged.

[Photo: A.C.M.E. was presented the $3,000 cash prize by Minister Lawrence Wong and Mr Kwek Leng Joo.]

Team Tribus, on the other hand, worked with Earth Arts, a supplier of natural stones and tiles.  Building on the company’s environmental efforts in the ‘3Rs’ – reduce, reuse and recycling, the team developed an integrated approach to sustainability that included two more ‘R’s: rethink and responsibility.  Their recommendations included using Earth Arts’ waste tiles to create mosaic art with primary school children, rehabilitative programmes for ex-offenders and youths-at-risk, as well as creating a framework to augment community initiatives that will empower Earth Arts’ employees to take ownership of the company’s CSR efforts.

On her personal takeaways from the competition, Jovyne, leader of Team Tribus, said, “The competition really helped us understand the CSR efforts taken in Singapore and how much room there is for improvement.  The way each industry can contribute differs and there is certainly no one-size-fits-all solution…  As students from the SMU School of Social Sciences, this competition has also been a great value-add for us, in terms of understanding our majors and other related modules.”

[Photo: Tribus was presented the $2,000 cash prize by Minister Lawrence Wong and Mr Kwek Leng Joo.]

The winning teams took home prize money of $5,000, $3,000 and $2,000 respectively.  The top three prizes were presented at the opening of the 2014 International Singapore Compact CSR Summit in October 2014 at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.

[Featured photo: Guest-of-Honour, Mr Lawrence Wong, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth and Second Minister for Communications and Information and Mr Kwek Leng Joo, President, Singapore Compact and Deputy Chairman, CDL, presented this year’s winning teams, Clover (1st), A.C.M.E. (2nd) and Tribus (3rd) with their prizes.]