Coca-Cola India to adopt and revamp rural and semi-urban schools

Sometimes even a toilet can stand in the way of education. Last year, when Coca-Cola India decided to adopt and revamp rural and semi-urban schools as part of its community and sustainability programme, it found that a lack of toilets was keeping students away, particularly the girls.

"A lot the girls were attending school for just an hour or two and then returning home, since there were no toilets," says Atul Singh, President and CEO of Coca-Cola India and South West Asia.

"So we decided to start with that." Not just building more toilets, but providing better sanitation and drinking water facilities, and then slowly moving to infrastructure as well - setting up a library, equipping a classroom, sprucing up a badminton court.

Recently, Coke celebrated the revamp of its 100th school in a Mumbai neighbourhood, with a visit by cricketer and brand ambassador Sachin Tendulkar. As Tendulkar interacted with the kids, he also told the organisers (Coke and its NGO partners) that they need to score the next century of school revamps faster than he got his hundred 100th.

Coke is already on it. "Our idea is to be facilitators and make people aware that they need to address issues like this," says Singh. "We start off the work, and then have the community, neighbourhood or local panchayat step in and take it up. The idea is to get the whole community behind the project."

And a little about educating the community as well. "We do a lot of programme under the aegis of our Coca-Cola Foundation, like greening the school, having rainwater harvesting on campus and trying to achieve water balance," says Singh.