Page 24 - ELITE PLUS MAGAZINE VOL11

“NGOs have a mission to develop sustainable projects and help people set up community enterprises through- out the country,” he said. “However, this requires effective management to put ideas into practice. The govern- ment, idealistic NGOs and scholars lack this capability. On the other hand, business needs efficient management in order to remain profitable. That’s why the corporate sector must take part in the cooperative triangle.”An established corporate agent in Thailand, Bangkok Bank feels this responsibility and has contributed much to Thai society. The bank’s mot- to states that the company’s prosperity must be shared with society, allowing the two parties to flourish together.Improving national education is one issue that the bank supports. In December, a CSR campaign to distribute books to school libraries was launched at Bangkok Bank’s mainbranch in Hat Yai, Songkla Province. In cooperation with Praphansarn Publishing and Plearn Aksorn book store, this project contributed select children’s books worth 8 million baht to 160 schools in Songkla.“The campaign will aim to cultivate reading habits in the younger generation,” Jinda Wongsuwanwaree, Bangkok Bank’s head manager in the South of Thailand, said at the launch. “Despite the development of educational materials, I strongly believe that reading is the most effective method of learning. The project also responds to one of Bangkok Bank’s CSR concepts, which is to promote education. We cannot deny that education is the key factor in national development and it is our mission to succeed in it together.”Apart from the violence of the insurgency, the shortfall of learning materials in the deep South is keepingchildren from getting the most out of their education. The shelves of libraries in remote schools are left empty, or have a few books with outdated content, leaving students unable to compete with those in cities to the north. But there are some initiatives to help them out of their predicament, and Bangkok Bank’s book distribution programme will give students from 160 schools more opportunities to read – a few drops of generosity to help nurture young minds.Titles distributed to each school were valued at 50,000 baht and aim to educate children on various themes including leadership, ASEAN’s cultural diversity and HM the King’s sufficiency economy philosophy.The collections also contain some unconventional content meant to show that life does not always have a22 Elite+