Vodafone Egypt plans to up CSR budget to EGP 40 m in 2021

03 / 07 / 2021

By Khaled El Deeb - - | Edited by Marwa Nassar

Vodafone Egypt announced plans to up financial allocations for corporate social responsibility (CSR) to EGP 40 million in 2021, at an EGP 10 million rise in comparison with the CSR budget in 2020.

Vodafone Egypt is one of the leading companies that established a special department for CSR in Egypt and this reflects the company’s commitment to merging CSR into its action plan.

In an interview with CSR Egypt, May Yassin, Sustainable Business Senior Manager & Secretary General Vodafone Egypt Foundation, said the company’s CSR strategy focused over the past years on four sectors; namely education, youth and women empowerment and environment protection.

In the educational domain, she said the company launched “Ta3limy” platform to ensure high-quality and equitable education.

The company also launched “Begin” platform to be a hub for all talented freelancers that strive to get exposed to a bigger market, exchange knowledge and earn extra money. It is also for individuals, small, medium or large enterprises that want to benefit from a pool of highly talented freelancers that are ready to deliver outstanding work.

Vodafone Egypt also launched FEKRETEK platform for empowering women, especially female entrepreneurs.

Vodafone Egypt also teamed up with the Egyptian Environment Ministry to launch the E-Tadweer application for collecting and recycling electronic waste. This falls within the framework of the presidential initiative “Go Green.”

Asked about the impact of the coronavirus on the company CSR strategy, she said although the pandemic caused confusion to many fields, the company, however, has worked on accelerating its efforts to serve the distance learning process, especially for the most vulnerable communities.

At the end of 2019, Vodafone Egypt gave the go ahead of “Ta3limy” platform to be the first digital education platform in Egypt that offered for-free educational content for the underserved communities. Ta3limy aimed at serving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals no 4 on Quality Education and no 9 on Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, she said.

Ta3limy platform – in partnership with Al-Adwaa – offered subjects, questions, summaries and interactive videos which are beneficial for students in various educational stages.

Ta3limy also partnered with Little Thinking Minds to offer a collection of interactive digital books to enhance skills of Arabic Language reading.

Vodafone Egypt Foundation also teamed up Ideas Gym to introduce training programs for students on programming, robot science, electronics, etc.

Asked about future plans, she said the company plans to offer a chance for training teachers via Ta3limy platform and granting them accredited certificates from heavyweight national and international institutions, like Atlantic Florida University and FranklinCovey.

The company also plans to expand the number of beneficiaries of “Begin” platform.

She added that Vodafone Egypt is planning to engage in partnerships with the governmental and private sectors in view of the company’s belief in the importance of partnerships as well as its keenness to reach the largest number of people in need for help in society. She said the company will sign a number of cooperation protocols with the National Council for Women, the Egyptian Banking Institute, Samsung and WellSpring.