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Hats off to CSR champs
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Le Méridien Dhaka, the hospitality partner for the event.
LafargeHolcim’s Comprehensive Health Programme for the Chhatak community won the award in the healthcare category, while bKash’s National Book Reading Programme & Science Fairs bagged the top award in the education segment.
HSBC’s initiative The Mangrove Plantation for Climate Mitigation took home the accolade in the environment category, while Coca-Cola Bangladesh won in community engagement.
The Best CSR in Financial Inclusion award went to Marico Bangladesh, while Epyllion Group won the award in the Rapid Response category.
Five young changemakers were also awarded as the Young Humanitarian of the Year: Adnan Hossain, founder of It’s Humanity Foundation; Shekh Mohammed Moinul Islam, founder of Human Aid Bangladesh Foundation; Shanjidul Alam Seban Shaan, founder of EcoVation Bangladesh; Azwa Nayeem, founder of Alokito Hridoy Foundation; and Md Sahariar Hasan Jiisun, founder of Bloodman.
It’s Humanity Foundation provides free quality education, healthcare and skill development training for marginalised communities, while Human Aid Bangladesh Foundation is working to empower underprivileged women and children through healthcare and education.
EcoVation Bangladesh engages youth volunteers with communities to help marginalised people with solar power and tech innovations, while Alokito Hridoy Foundation is training thousands of teachers in modern and gamified teaching methods.
Bloodman is a platform that connects blood donors to patients in Bangladesh.
CSR is a mammoth task and the government knows it very well,” Minister Mannan said, adding that there is synergy between the private sector’s CSR and the government’s social development works.
Nowadays, the spirit of volunteerism is fading; even with money, young people cannot be brought into volunteerism, Anam said.
“If Bangladesh has to continue a sustainable journey, all of us will have to work together,” he added.
As per estimates, Bangladesh needs nearly $1 trillion between 2017 and 2030 to implement the sustainable development goals (SDGs), said Mohd Monirul Islam, joint secretary (SDGs) at the prime minister’s office, in his keynote speech.
He mentioned five Ps for balanced and sustainable development in society: people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership.
“Until and unless jobs are created, economic growth will not be sustainable,” he said, while calling for a multi-stakeholder partnership for sustainable development.
Monirul also called for accountability and proper data to incorporate everybody in the government’s SDG plans.
“Without proper data and accountability, it is not possible to confidently say that nobody was left behind -- which is the main target of the SDGs.”
To ensure better data protection, the government has created the national data coordination committee under the PMO, Monirul said, while urging the private sector to come out of the traditional CSR practices.
“We want to see a day when Bangladesh no longer needs foreign aid and we can solve our social problems on our own. We envision a day where every organisation will have humanity as one of its core values,” said Ahsan Rony, co-founder of CSR Window Bangladesh.
Shehzad Munim, managing director of BAT Bangladesh, called for moving on from CSR activities and adopting the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) standards, which provide a framework for evaluating a company’s efforts to positively impact its people, communities and the planet.
For that, support from the government and societal changemarkers is needed.
BATB, which has been conducting CSR activities for the last 43 years, is the first company in Bangladesh to publish an ESG report and such reports will be published every year by the company, he said.
“ESG should be considered as an investment, rather than as CSR, which is philanthropy,” he said, adding that the country needs to shift to greener and cleaner energy for environmental sustainability.

Three killed in twin school shootings in Brazil
AFP, Brasília
At least three people including an adolescent girl were killed and 11 others wounded Friday when a 16-year-old shooter wearing Nazi symbols opened fire on two schools in southeastern Brazil, officials said.
Authorities in the city of Aracruz, in Espirito Santo state, said the shooter fired on a group of teachers at his former school, killing two people and leaving nine others wounded.
He then left that school -- a public primary and secondary school -- and went to a nearby private school where he killed an adolescent girl and wounded two other people, officials said.
Authorities have arrested the shooter, said Governor Renato Casagrande, who declared three days of mourning in the state.
“He was a student at (the first) school until June, a 16-year-old minor. His family then transferred him to another school. We have information he was undergoing psychiatric treatment,” Casagrande told a news conference.
He said some of the survivors’ lives remained at risk from their wounds.
“We are rooting and praying for them to recover,” he said.
Security camera footage aired on Brazilian media showed the shooter running into the school dressed in military-style camouflage and brandishing a gun. He then sprinted through the hallways, sending staff fleeing in terror as he began firing shots.
Investigators said he had a swastika on his fatigues and that they were looking into whether he had links to any extremist organisations.
Officials said the shooter, a policeman’s son, used two handguns in the attack, both registered to his father -- one his service firearm, the other a privately registered weapon.
Casagrande said the boy appeared to have planned the attack carefully, breaking in through a locked door and skirting the school’s security guard.
He then entered the teachers’ lounge -- the first room he came to -- and opened fire, the governor said.
“He was looking to shoot people. He opened fire on the first people he came across,” he said.
Civil police commissioner Joao Francisco Filho told reporters it appeared the suspect had been planning the attack for “two years,” and that he did not seem to have a “definite target.”
Investigators could be seen carrying victims’ bodies in coffins and loading them into police trucks outside the school, which was cordoned off with crime scene tape, an AFP photographer said.
The city has a population of around 100,000 people.
School shootings are relatively rare in Brazil, but have been increasing in recent years.
Brazil’s deadliest school shooting left 12 children dead in 2011, when a man opened fire at his former elementary school in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of Realengo, then killed himself.
In 2019, two former students shot dead eight people at a high school in Suzano, outside Sao Paulo, then also took their own lives.
Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called the latest shootings an “absurd tragedy.”
“I was saddened to learn of the attacks,” he wrote on Twitter.
“All my solidarity to the victims’ families... and my support to Governor Casagrande for the investigation and assistance to the two school communities.”
Lula, who was previously Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010, will take office on January 1 after defeating far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in elections last month.
He has been sharply critical of Bolsonaro’s dramatic relaxation of gun-control laws.
Since ex-army captain Bolsonaro became president in 2019, the number of registered gun owners in Brazil has more than quintupled, from 117,000 to 673,000, boosted by a series of presidential decrees relaxing regulations on firearms and ammunition.
Public security expert Bruno Langeani of research institute Sou da Paz told AFP the outgoing administration’s policies had made such attacks more likely.
“The increase in availability of firearms in recent years promoted by the Bolsonaro government facilitates this kind of episode,” he said.
The latest attacks spurred calls for gun policy reform.
“Gun policy needs to be reviewed,” tweeted senator-elect Wellington Dias, a Lula ally.