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: Green flights

British Airways has taken fresh steps to intensify its work in limiting aviation’s impact on climate change. The airline unveiled a new carbon offset scheme, and backing for deforestation prevention in Brazil and research into the effects of aircraft’s non-carbon emissions.

The upgraded offset scheme uses UN-certified emissions reductions to help finance clean energy projects in developing countries. Customers offsetting their flight emissions will be supporting a biomass power plant located at Mahasamund in Chattisgarh, where rice husk is combusted to generate electricity, along with a new windfarm in one of the poorest regions of China, as well as run-of-the-river hydroelectric plants in China and Brazil.

Fairer and lovelier

A total of 176 girls, who fought against odds to realise their dreams, have been chosen by the Fair & Lovely Foundation for scholarships for 2007. The scholarships are given to deserving, young women to pursue graduate, post-graduate, and doctorate studies.

This year, most of the scholarships have gone to women who are the first graduates in their families. With the scholarships, the students will now be able to pursue further studies in fields ranging from computer applications, medicine, business administration, technology, journalism, engineering, veterinary science, among others.

For Ashok Venkatramani, VP, skin care, HLL, the attempt is towards fostering girl child and women empowerment. “To us, education could be the first biggest step towards making this empowerment possible.”

From three lakh applications received from across India, candidates were shortlisted on the basis of their academic performance, economic need and drive to achieve. These candidates were then chosen after personal interviews.

Eye check-up by Canon

Canon India, along with the Venu Eye Institute, organised a free eye check-up camp for the child winners of the national bravery awards in the Capital last week. The winners for this year were also rewarded by Kensaku Konishi, president, Canon India with a Canon digital camera for their selfless acts of courage in the midst of adversity. Speaking on the occasion, Konishi, says, “We, at Canon are committed to national development of the country and therefore we thought of providing free eye check-ups to these brave children as eyes are vital organs and also because of their visual capabilities akin to Canon digital cameras.”

Canon along with Venu Eye Institute, will take a lot of capacity-building initiatives in the near future, which will be a part of its commitment to Indian society. Such initiatives will be taken with an objective of providing high quality eye care to the people of India, says the company.

CSR award to Mahindra

Mahindra & Mahindra bagged the Pegasus Corporate Social Responsibility Gold Award for 2007. M&M received this distinction for its initiatives in the field of health and education, i.e. the Lifeline Express project and Nanhi Kali, respectively.

“The company has been working on education (with special emphasis on the girl child), health and environment under its CSR mission. Large numbers of Mahindra employees regularly dedicate their personal time and energy for several worthy causes across the country through our unique employee social options programme,” said Rajeev Dubey, president, HR & Corporate Services, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.