Making a Difference

Celebrating its 10th year of fundraising, the Singtel Touching Lives Fund (STLF) kicked off its annual activities with a flag day on 24 June 2011. Led by the Group’s senior management, the event saw whole-hearted response from about 800 employees, family members and friends.

Other signature events held under the STLF banner included Fold-A-Heart, where Singtel donates S$1 for every origami and electronic heart received, as well as the Charity Golf event which raised a record S$820,000 last year. In all, the Group raised S$2.6 million over the year for the STLF.

The funds go a long way in helping six beneficiaries that run programmes for disadvantaged children and young persons in Singapore, namely APSN Chaoyang School, APSN Tanglin School, AWWA Early Years Centre – Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Young Children, MINDS Lee Kong Chian Gardens School, Singapore Cancer Society’s “Help the Children and Youths” and Students Care Service. Over the past decade, the STLF has raised over S$22 million for our beneficiaries.

In Australia, Optus actively supports various charity partners throughout the year by holding fundraising events and campaigns among its staff, such as Lock Up Your Boss to support Kids Helpline, Movember in support of Beyondblue and Tour de Cure in support of Optus’ charity partner, The Cancer Council, and other cancer-related charities. Through various charity fundraisers, Optus people have donated over A$100,000 in support of Optus’ 13 charity partners.

Youths, however, remain a key focus as beneficiaries. The mobile student2student programme launched by Optus and The Smith Family aims to help young people who are at risk of leaving school in the metro and regional areas by improving their reading skills through mobile phones. Matched with an older student “buddy”, 260 disadvantaged children read to their buddy three times a week using mobile phones supplied by Optus. As an added incentive, students keep the mobile phones and are rewarded with credits upon completion of the programme. Evaluation studies showed 81 per cent of the students in the programme improved their reading levels.

Optus also supports young people via community grants for local programmes that address social isolation and disengaged youths by providing access to communications and improving education outcomes. In FY2012, Optus awarded 32 charity organisations with A$150,000 worth of grants, bringing the total grants to over A$550,000 since 2008.

Promoting the Spirit of Volunteerism

We believe in the spirit of volunteerism and encourage staff to spend time helping others in need. We give our staff in Singapore and Australia one day of paid volunteer leave, which they may use for the benefit of any charity or community organisation.

In Singapore, we continued to promote “VolunTeaming” – a programme that enables our staff to team up with colleagues for a volunteer activity. Some 1,700 employees gave about 8,000 hours of their time to engage in 24 meaningful community and environmental projects during the year.

One of the VolunTeaming projects undertaken during the year was by the Global Accounts employees, who came together to organise a lunch-cum-entertainment session for about 100 residents of the AWWA Community Home for Senior Citizens. The seniors were treated to songs, games, gifts and a delicious meal, served personally by our staff.

In another VolunTeaming effort, Satellite staff rallied together to clean cars and sell packets of dried fruit and nuts for charity. Their efforts paid off and they raised about S$8,500 for the STLF.

In Australia, Optus introduced a five-week skilled volunteer programme where leaders within the company contribute their skills, knowledge and experience to indigenous organisations in regional Australia.

One of the key volunteerism initiatives in Optus is the collaboration with the Australian Business Community Network where Optus staff mentor “high-needs youths”, namely students who are geographically, socially, financially or physically disadvantaged. Many of these students are from non-English speaking or refugee backgrounds, and lack the opportunities available to most urban students. FY2012 saw our largest participation number to date – 408 employees mentored 1,477 students and school leaders in 29 schools across Australia.

Going Green

As a Group, we believe being a responsible corporate citizen includes caring for the environment and promoting a sustainable way of life. Project LESS is Singtel’s environmental campaign aimed at raising awareness among employees and customers of the need to reduce our carbon footprint. Apart from the annual Plant-A-Tree Day for our staff, a Singtel-Nokia Mobile Phone Recycling Programme was created for consumers in late March 2011, a first by a telco in Singapore.

In a similar initiative, Optus promotes the recycling of discarded mobile phones via Mobilemuster, an industry-wide Australian programme. Optus customers can recycle their phones at Optus stores or send them back to us using the reply-paid satchels included in the packaging of prepaid phones. Recycled mobile phones receive a new lease of life as batteries, stainless steel products, plastic fence posts, pallets and even jewellery.

In a united effort to support Earth Hour, all Singtel shop outlets and Singtel Exclusive Retailers across the island turned off non-essential lighting and dimmed interior lights on 31 March 2012. Optus too, showed their support by encouraging staff and customers to “switch off” and think of ways to help the environment.

Our regional mobile associates also played their part in going green. All eight Singtel Group operators collaborated with GSMA in a Mobile Energy Efficiency benchmarking initiative. A benchmark will be developed for the operators to drive energy cost savings and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their network operations.

Joining Hands with Regional Associates

As a responsible corporate citizen, Singtel and our regional mobile associates respond readily to support disaster relief efforts where possible. During the year, we donated 2 million Baht to the communities affected by the severe flooding in Thailand, as well as 500,000 Pesos to Globe’s disaster relief efforts for Typhoon Sendong victims in the Philippines. AIS and Globe, besides outright cash donations, also responded to the calamity by offering free call and SMS services to victims, and set up internet stations in evacuation centres to help them contact their loved ones.

We stepped up our community efforts with two Singtel Overseas Volunteering Programme expeditions to Cebu, Philippines and Ayutthaya, Thailand during the year, in conjunction with Globe and AIS respectively, to help rebuild communities affected by natural disasters.

Singtel and the regional mobile associates also partnered Ericsson Response to provide emergency communications services to support disaster relief efforts in South and Southeast Asia. This marked the world’s first operator partnership for Ericsson Response.

Ensuring Customer Safety

The Group is committed to the safety and protection of our customers. This includes data protection, as laid out in our Sustainability Report. For example, our radiation emissions from base stations are well within the acceptable limits of the guidelines set by the local authority.

To protect children, we offer mobile applications which allow parents to filter, block or allow access to specific sites as well as to set age appropriate default settings. Optus takes this one step further by partnering Kids Helpline and developing ready-made lesson plans on cyberbullying with the aim of educating young people about this major issue. These award-winning educational packs were distributed to 10,000 schools across Australia, serving as useful materials for teachers to educate their students about cyberbullying, sexting and the safe use of technology.