Day 2  – Drop-In Centres

When I’d watched Slumdog Millionaire the extreme poverty had almost seemed staged.

As soon as we stepped outside the hotel the poverty in Kolkata was real and shocking.

Today we visited 4 rural villages which each had a new drop-in centre building built from the Save the Children & RB partnership. The drop-in centres were donated by RB to allow young village girls to attend and learn vocational sewing skills to help gain work and not be sent to the city as maids. Today was the official opening of the 4 centres and as the sole sponsors, we were asked to attend. RB funded these four centres following the catastrophic cyclone which hit the region in 2009.

We began our 2hr car journey into the depths of rural Bengal. What a culture shock! A rickety dirt track, roaming skinny cows in the road, people hanging onto the outside of busses and no electricity for a 2 hr radius!

We arrive at the first drop in centre to see literally hundreds of children stood outside waiting for us and all waving. They were all lined up waiting to greet us with a handshake and to throw traditional confetti over us as a welcome. We could not believe the reception; it was overwhelming.

It was emotional to see the ceremonial opening as this really is not just another building but a symbolic and real step forward to help these children.

Day 3  – Local Theme Park

Today was yet again another inspirational day where saw yet more successes achieved by Save the Children with RB funding. We visited a city centre drop-in centre and were asked to help the girls paint the walls with positive and inspiring murals. The atmosphere was so positive and once again we were greeted with hundreds of bright smiley children. It’s rare to see children back home so excited by the prospect of attending an optional drop-in centre to learn maths and English but here they really are. It feels so satisfying to know that the money I have donated over the years has gone towards this.

After painting we took a number of the girls to a local theme park so they can escape the daily grind and for once enjoy being children. We loved seeing them have fun, it was very touching.

Day 4 – Beauty Salons

Today we went to visit beauty salons with girls who have passed their Save the Children beautician courses and are now in employment making their own money and living back home with their family. They welcomed us by offering to show us their learned skills with a treatment at the salon as a thank you for us funding their beautician training.

Having witnessed the journey Save the Children go through to find the girls in domestic work, educate their employers to allow them to enrol in education, take them back to their families, train them up and now make a living was inspirational. This programme is solely RB funded. Our fundraising in RB really makes a difference. It’s tangible, immediate and real. We have made a huge difference to date. There is so much left to do. Please know your efforts are paying off. We have to be so proud of what were achieving.

Now looking back at my visit

I often wonder what would happen if charities chose to show images of the success stories of their work and not focus on poverty and harrowing images.

What I remember most about my visit was the success stories and seeing the girls graduate from their courses, see them laughing and playing like children should. For me that’s what resonates and proved to me just how tangible, real and immediate mine and my colleagues’ contribution is. I’m so grateful to have been given this once in a lifetime opportunity to witness what happens when people step in and do their bit; I’m so inspired by my RB colleagues who have been making so much effort to support Save the Children.

I’m so proud to work for RB. We are a successful global business and using our power to make a difference.

This is what we have all achieved to date with our funding in India alone:

•           Last year 140 girls have been completely withdrawn from abusive domestic work

•           Last year 151 girls have graduated the beautician course and either in full time employment or providing free lance beauty services

•           Last year over 1000 girls have been on official Save the Children vocational and educational programmes

•           Built 4 vocational centres across Bengal for education and training to girls in abusive domestic labour

•           Opened 6 education drop-in centres

•           Set up 19 child protection groups covering 570 villages in Bengal

•           Over the next few years we aim to open 15 more educational drop-in centres and save 500 girls from domestic work.

I never imagined that though my day job I would get the opportunity to turn my skills and drive to such a good cause. I’m inspired to continue and never turn a blind eye. Thank you RB and Save the Children, you can count on me.

To really step change our fundraising we have set up an Action Group within the UK Business specifically to drive the Save the Children & RB partnership in the UK. Our target is to raise £120k in 2011 and we need you to help us.

If you would like to get involved please contact myself or any of the Action Group members.

To find out more about the different programmes RB funds globally with Save the Children.

Day 0 – Back at home

I came into contact with Save the Children through the partnership with RB and had been involved in the typical way, through donations and sponsoring RB employees. I knew of Save the Children as a global trusted organisation focusing on children’s issues abroad but no more than that. I was interested to find out more so a few months ago I decided get involved by donating my marketing skills to the charity as an alternative to the sponsored runs etc. I’m not cut out for a serious physical challenge!…but didn’t want to miss out on doing my bit. The more I found out the more passionate I became to help support their journey. I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out about how much RB do to support Save the Children. It really made me proud to realise we are one of their biggest global corporate sponsors and that we truly make an impact – over the last 5 yrs we have fundraised £4.5m! I had often wondered what this money had achieved and it almost felt too vague to pin it down to tangible change.

Weeks later when an email popped into my inbox inviting me to join a small group of RB employees from around the world to visit the Child Domestic Workers (CDW) Programme in India, I was overwhelmed. I knew that visiting Kolkata in India to meet young girls saved from horrendous abuse of domestic labour would be life changing.

Day 1 – Working with Save the Children in Kolkata

First agenda point we visited the Save the Children office in Kolkata where the three leaders of the programme presented to us the issues with Child Domestic Work and what Save the Children do to help overcome it. As the presentation started, our group was instantly struck by the sadness of what was happening on our doorstep in Kolkata. It was hard not to get emotional and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

Shocking Facts

The reality of the facts is shocking …
• In Kolkata 50,000 vulnerable & poor families have given up their young daughters to traffickers in return for money…only a small number of girls will ever see their families again
• Young girls are targeted as they are more vulnerable, cannot fight back or escape
• When trafficked, the girls are segmented according to their beauty. The lighter the girls’ skin, the prettier she’s perceived to be so she’s trafficked into prostitution. The darker the skin girls are sent to work as live in maids to the middle classes in the city and made to work 15hr days, 7 days a week, often locked inside the home, abused and not known to the outside world
• 4 out of 10 middle class homes have a child working for them as a maid

It struck me, just because this is happening in a different continent doesn’t make it any more acceptable or less sad. I imagined what would happen if we heard on the news that every child girl in London and Birmingham is being forced to quit school and work as live in abused maids. What would the reaction be and why is this any less of a travesty abroad?

The leaders then presented to us the details of this CDW programme. I never imagined just how long-term, strategic and thought out their work is. Coming from a corporate background I wasn’t expecting a charity to work in this way. This really reassured me that the funding received is very well spent and each penny accounted for.

We were taken through the process of how the girls are found by Save the Children and the different approaches taken to end the domestic work cycle. Sadly, even when a girl is saved from abusive work and returned to her family, often they don’t want their daughters back as they still can’t feed them. The process is therefore painfully slow.

The most important and costly element of the Save the Children work is education. Save the Children deliver a three pronged approach to educate…
- the girls receive either vocational training or basic literacy and numeric skills so they can earn a living for themselves
- the abusive employer to allow the girl time off to attend their education
- the girls’ parents to take them back and allow them to gain employment for themselves while living in their safe home

Success Stories

For the second part of the day we were taken to visit the success stories of their education and what our RB fundraising is delivering. The mood of the group went from sad to uplifting and inspiring.

Today 50 domestic worker teenage girls were ‘graduating’ from the Save the Children literacy/numeracy course and we were asked to host the event in a large city book shop. We turned up to see all the girls eagerly awaiting us with big beaming smiles waving to us. It instantly shocked me just how positive these girls looked on the outside and you’d never know the hidden sadness underneath their smile. I was very touched and inspired to see these girls making a better life for themselves.

We later went to visit another education stream which was based around teaching the girls beautician skills. Again, seeing so many girls on their way to a better life was really motivating for me to help whenever I can as the results are so tangible and real. It costs Save the Children £60 to educate 1 girl for a year. It’s sad and strange to think that for the price of a nice meal out, a child can be given a better life.

Emotional

Emotion was again upon us when we were invited to visit a Save the Children drop in centre where the kids wanted to perform for us as a welcome. What we saw was incredibly touching. The children put on a puppet show skit of the reality of domestic labour, acting out the abuse, tormenting and loneliness they faced. Save the Children girls perform this in the villages as a form of education to poor families about the realities of what happens when they give their daughter away.

Day 1 was needless to say very emotional.

Look out for my next blog where I will continue to talk to you about experience on visit on Day 2,3 and 4.

(You can also read this blog on the Save the Children website)

I hope my blogs have given you an insight into a Marketer’s life at Reckitt Benckiser. I’ve really enjoyed telling you about my role and what makes it so exceptional for me, and many other Marketers’ here at RB. I’ve wanted to be a Brand Manager since I was 16 and now working at RB I’m so glad I made that choice. I wont lie, its not an easy ride, but its exciting and the rewards are so high when you get it right. You may not have heard of Reckitt Benckiser but you’ve certainly bought our brands. Take a chance and apply and in a few months we could be welcoming to work on a brand you currently use!

We want to give you a flavour of life at RB from many angles and different people’s perspectives so my time on the blog is up now and in a few days you’ll have a new set of bloggers to read about.

Best of luck in your careers and goodbye from me for now…

I would argue this month is the most important and exciting month for a Marketer working in Reckitt Benckiser.
1. I’m developing my Brand Plan for next year
2. I’m finalising all the marketing mix activities for my New Product (NPD) that’s launching into market this September

Every brand has a Brand Plan which is written a year ahead and it’s used as the ‘bible’ for how you manage and promote the brand for that year.

Brand Plans are written over a few weeks as it’s a lengthy process to collate and make sense of all the learnings, research and data at our disposal and requires much strategic thinking. Although its lead by the brand, it’s a team effort between Marketing and Sales because at Reckitt Benckiser brands and numbers are at the heart of our business so the starting point is agreeing what the financial target for the brand should be. This is decided through many rounds of what we call ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’ forecasting. Marketing and Sales forecast what we believe we can deliver and we marry this up with the top down target we get from the CEO. The Brand Plan then tells you how to strategically deliver this target…and at RB the targets are never easy, but that’s what ensures we deliver strong growth year on year!

At the same time…
New product development (NPD) is the most exciting project for any marketeer as you launch a new innovation for your consumers with a variety of marketing mix activities. Im currently developing these new activities for Strepsils which include new TV advertising, in store promotions, new packaging, PR campaigns and much more.

Developing and executing an NPD launch is the sexy bit of marketing and is one of the biggest focus areas for us at Reckitt Benckiser because our brands are our most important assets. I feel so lucky to be managing a brand like Strepsils which is over 50 years old! The consumer trust that comes with that is priceless.

Look out for the Strepsils NPD in the peak sore throat season in November & December. Let me know what you think, there’s nothing more satisfying than positive feedback from your consumers, so I hope you like it!

Friends of mine who work in careers ranging from medicine to charity have asked how I feel ethically about working in such a large corporate organisation with a mission to make profit.
I say that I’m extremely proud because Reckitt Benckiser is unlike any other I know.
I don’t blame them for being curious about the corporate sector and its corporate responsibility practices, as you often hear bad press about large scale organisations’ social responsibility when it goes wrong.
But at Reckitt Benckiser, social responsibility is at the forefront our daily practices.
Our CEO, Bart Becht, actually visited the branch I work at to personally present Carbon 20, a new global initiative to reduce the carbon footprint of all our products.
For him to do this himself signals just how much RB will focus on the environment going forward.
It’s motivating because I can – and have to – participate in this in my day job.
Strepsils is the fastest growing global brand we have, so it’s critical we get on board. For example we have changed all our plastic external packaging to a more sustainable version as well as vetting all our suppliers to ensure they also comply by strict social responsibility guidelines.
In our office we even have 3 compartment bins, each of which we use to separate out paper, plastic and general waste. It’s made so easy for us to make a personal difference.
RB has been hosting an ongoing conversation about corporate social responsibility on LinkedIn and the Reckitt Benckiser Facebook page.

However, our social responsibility doesn’t just focus on the environment but also on charity.
Save The Children is our official charity and not only are there many opportunities to participate in fundraising initiatives but anyone in the business can suggest an activity where they fundraise and RB will match it!
A group of 61 employees have just returned from an amazing fundraising trek in the Himalayas for Save the Children in which they were also given the opportunity to help out at local schools projects.
Reckitt Benckiser is unlike any other large scale corporation I know in this respect and I’m extremely proud to be part of it.