In line with the environment issue in the past post, I want to discuss corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Kuwait.

One definition for CSR is -

concept whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, employees, shareholders, communities and the environment in all aspects of their operations.

The field is relatively new, and has been gaining attention slowly but surely in the region. Apparently there is an annual Corporate Social Responsibility conference held in Kuwait as well as a few in the region ( 1 , 2 ).

In Kuwait, as far as I can recall, the two companies that are the most active are NBK and Zain. The best example of their efforts is the NBK pediatric hospital and the Zain Hospital (previously MTC) for Ear-Nose-Throat. I can’t really recall any other company really contributing to that extent in that field. I am sure there are other examples but nothing comes to mind right now.

I was looking through several websites of Kuwaiti companies seeing which of them have a section for CSR, and to my surprise, there were more than I expected -

NBK
Zain
Gulf Bank
Agility
Commercial Bank
KIPCO
Equate
Sultan Center
KNPC (pdf)
KPC
Dar Investment

(if you know any more, please tell me so I can update the list)

I was surprised that companies like Wataniya Telecom or KFH didn’t have a section on their website. This doesn’t mean that they don’t contribute to the society as much as others, it just isn’t reflected as an important issue on their website. Some of the links above are very impressive, especially the NBK website dedicated for the CSR.

While looking for some information, I stumbled onto a couple of interesting links.

First, there is the CSR Middle East organization, which is the Middle East’s First Online Corporate Social Responsibility Platform. I like the concept behind it, which at least puts the spotlight on such an important issue.

Another interesting website was the CSR Awards website, which is basically a competition in Kuwait for Kuwaiti companies to award the best of them and give them the recognition they deserve. (Looking through the website, the deadline for submitting a company is in 4 days!)

Its great to see such initiatives from the companies and different organizations on CSR, and glad to see that it is gaining importance. I just hope to see more environemntal issues tackled in these efforts, like the one on the streets from about 3 weeks ago -

This was done by “Challenge the Era Company” (which is sadly a very poor translation of the Arabic name تحدي العصر), which also are related to Environment Friends Campaign (EFC) . Many companies mentioned above and others are involved in sponsoring this campaign.

We need more of that. The main problem we have right now in Kuwait is awareness. Many people are not aware about the environmental issues and their impact. Hopefully the companies with the CSR departments will start looking at this aspect to work on.