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Tanoto Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Tanoto Family, was recently featured in The Jakarta Post, April 27, 2015. The article touched on how the Foundation tackles poverty through its 3E thrusts – Education, Empowerment, Enhancement – and various initiatives and programmes to address inequalities derived from poverty.
One initiative, Pelita Pendidikan, aims at raising the standards of education through a multi-prong approach of making schools safe, healthy and environmentally friendly, establishing well-stocked school libraries, and training of teachers.
Produced by The Jakarta Post in cooperation with Company-Community Partnerships for Health in Indonesia (CCPHI), the article is as follows:
Foundations have their own ways of demonstrating their commitment to sustainability, which commonly closely relates to how they look at a business.
Tanoto Foundation, with its corporate partner Asian Agri, for instance, sees the importance of empowering the community around its operational sites as part of its efforts to ensure sustainability.
Poverty alleviation through education, empowerment and enhancement has been the strategy embraced by Tanoto Foundation and mainstreamed into corporate social responsibilities programs of its corporate partners, such as Asian Agri.
Tanoto Foundation ensures that all CSR activities implemented by the partners are aligned with the poverty alleviation and delivered with quality impacts to community.
Teachers at a training session, part of the Pelita Pendidikan programme.
To have better impact in the plasma and independent smallholder partnership program, Tanoto Foundation implements Pelita Pendidikan, a program to improve the education quality in rural areas.
The activities include teachers’ trainings and supporting the establishment of functioning school libraries. In implementing its vision, the foundation collaborates with more than 320 schools across North Sumatra, Riau and Jambi.
“A good company should not merely think about profit for itself but should also benefit the surrounding community and the country. It should be good for the community, good for the country, only then it will be good for the company,” said Belinda Tanoto, quoting the message of her father Sukanto Tanoto, founder of Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) Group.
Belinda was speaking to over a hundred elementary, junior high and senior high students in the Sayap Garuda Sholars Gathering at the Heritage House in Medan recently. The students are recipients of scholarships from the Tanoto Foundation. Since 2006, the Tanoto Foundation has awarded scholarships to more than 4,900 students from different educational levels.
Belina and Imelda Tanoto with Tanoto Scholars in Medan. (Source: Tanotofoundation.org)
Through a better education, life-changing opportunities are wide open, said Imelda Tanoto, Sukanto Tanoto’s daughter, who is also a member of the Tanoto Foundation Board of Trustees.
By providing scholarships, Tanoto Foundation is also leveling playing field so that more children will have equal opportunity to get quality education and eventually will contribute to poverty alleviation, added Belinda.“Hopefully, the recipients of scholarships can benefit today and in the future, and be able to pay it forward to benefit larger community”.
Tanoto Foundation is a non-profit organisation established in 2001 by Sukanto Tanoto and his family, whose philanthropy dates back to 1981. It strives to be the centre of excellence in poverty alleviation through education, empowerment, and enhancement of quality of life.
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