Socially Smart Project Of BSCL Wins Sandvik India Gender Award

Bhubaneswar: The Socially Smart Project of Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) has won the third edition of Sandvik India Gender Awards, 2019.

The focus of the award is to recognise initiatives done to end violence against women and empowering girls and women in our society. It also encourages individuals and groups that are doing exemplary work to promote gender equality and strengthening SGD 5 (Sustainable Development Goals of UN referring to Gender Equality and Empowerment of All Women and Girls).

Swedish Consul General Mumbai Ulrika Sundberg gave away the award to BSCL in Pune and Gender Specialist Sarojini Brahma from BSCL received the award.

For this short-listing, the organisers had received 650 applications in various categories i.e. Independent, Not-for-profit organisations, Community-based organisations, Corporate CSR, Corporate policy, Academia, Government and Social venture. BSCL has bagged the award under Government category. In this category, the other two participants were from TISS and NABARD.

During the selection process, regional juries scrutinised the applications at Bangalore and New Delhi and ultimately three applications were shortlisted in each category and these participants presented their ideas to a panel of jury.

The Grand Jury for the final selection of the winners included Swedish Consul General Mumbai Ulrika Sundberg, Erwin Steinhauser MD Sandvik Asia Private Limited, Sara Larsson GM Swedish Chamber of Commerce in India, Kamal Singh Executive Director United Nations Global Compact India.

The Socially Smart Project is a collaborative initiative of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, BSCL and United Nations Population Fund(UNFPA)  and is being implemented at the field-level by Humara Bachpan Trust.

One component of making Bhubaneswar Socially Smart focuses on the safety and well-being of girls in slums. Under the programme, more than 300 girls have already been trained in self-defence techniques, series of community-level discussions on violence against girls and safety audit of slums.

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