Bangalore – In celebration of World Environment Day 2010, Accenture (NYSE:ACN), with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), today announced the launch of its year-long project aimed at creating environmental responsibility among students. The project will generate awareness about environmental issues at 15 colleges in seven locations – Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Noida and Pune.
Accenture employees, along with 20 students from each of these colleges, will work with TERI and its partner NGOs to devise ways of improving the environmental status of local communities. The communities will be identified based on a survey and needs analysis, and the teams will help each one look at environment-friendly options for income generation.
“This project is unique, as it involves our employees, students and NGOs in jointly addressing environment issues of local communities by helping them adopt simple environment-friendly practices,” said Rekha Menon, executive director, Accenture in India. “The intervention underscores our commitment to environment stewardship, driven by our core values, so we can contribute to a sustainable future for all of us.”
Commenting on developing this project for Accenture, Ranjana Saikia, director, Environment Education and Youth Services, TERI, said, “It is our endeavour to train young people, who will support us in mobilizing communities to adopt eco-friendly alternatives. The youth will play a major role in the success of this initiative, as they possess great potential in opting for environment-friendly solutions.”
In other Accenture World Environment Day initiatives, college students will team with company employees in a ‘plant-a-tree’ campaign across each of these seven project locations. Internally, Accenture will also conduct an ‘eco-challenge’ – providing an employee carbon calculator, to inspire its employees to understand and reduce their carbon footprint.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 181,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. Accenture is committed to being a good corporate citizen – dedicated to minimizing its environmental impact and helping individuals around the world build skills that enable them to participate in and contribute to the economy. The company generated net revenues of US$21.58 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
About TERI - EEA (Environment Education Awareness)
The Environment Education and Awareness area at TERI has dedicated itself to the task of creating an informed group of young citizens who will become the leaders of tomorrow and for whom environmental issues will become a part of their daily lives. It has conducted several projects on issues related to water, air, climate change, energy, etc. It develops and disseminates resource material (both print and electronic) for effective communication, besides networking with like-minded institutes, for wider outreach at the national and global platform.
The area targets mainly students and teachers and through them the community. To bring about a spirit of participatory competition for addressing environmental concerns innovative projects and activities are undertaken such as conferences, interactive sessions and discussions. An annual international environmental examination – GREEN Olympiad for middle and senior school students is conducted in association with the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Govt. of India that culminates in the TERRAQUIZ, the first environmental quiz programme for school students on Indian television. School Health and Hygiene programme is being carried out in the government schools of Haryana (Gurgaon, Sonepat and Panipat) and Delhi under the Yamuna Action Plan – II. Workshops, seminars, training programmes and educational field trips on environmental issues are organised for teachers and students at regular intervals. To know further details about the programme, contact eea@teri.res.in