Tata Sustainability Group was invited to participate as a panel member for the plenary: Corporate Volunteering for a Post Pandemic World. The session was moderated by Dr Kenn Allen, IAVE, USA (Moderator) and the panel members included Dr Tania Haddad, American University of Beirut, Lebanon; Andronica Mabuya, Discovery, South Africa; Stephanie Franco, TELUS, Canada; Gauri Rajadhyaksha, Tata Sons, India.

The theme for the 26th IAVE World Volunteer Conference was ‘Volunteering for the Common Good: Making Life Better for People and Communities’. Through the event IAVE and the Emirates Foundation celebrated volunteering, acknowledged that volunteer engagement and volunteering leadership is needed more than ever to help address the world’s most pressing challenges, and encourage volunteerism as an important part of creating a more equal and inclusive future for all.

Gauri Rajadhyaksha from Tata Sustainability Group, Tata Son’s shared the Tata Group’s approach on volunteering and the role of Tata Engage, the group level volunteering programme, in unifying all group companies onto a common platform. Gauri shed light on the importance of company specific volunteering programmes to align the business context and employee aspirations, alongside the need to empower employees to pursue volunteering in areas they are most passionate about. The IAVE report recommendation of “widening the big tent of volunteering” and “focus on impact focussed - skill based volunteering” were specifically to be noted while embedding scale and quality in volunteering in the post pandemic world. She applauded the Tata volunteering Specific Points Of Contact (SPOCs) across companies for championing volunteering and steering the group to clock over a million volunteering hours annually year-on-year for seven consecutive years.