Standard Chartered Bank and its HIV/AIDS prevention role

The people of the north-eastern Tanzanian town of Arusha had all but lost hope. Due to severe poverty and an acute lack of job opportunities, a large number of women in the town had turned to prostitution to earn enough money to feed the hungry mouths of their children. The high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, coupled with prostitution lead very quickly to the near out-of-control spread of the disease.

Then in April of 2004 Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) stepped in and, in collaboration with World Vision International, inaugurated a fish farm which brought many needed jobs to the area, effectively killing the prostitution industry and bringing hope back to the people of Arusha.

“This fitted very much with our general approach to wanting to build sustainable businesses and to be involved in communities,” recalled Clive Haswell, the bank CEO and its HIV/AIDS Ambassador to Sri Lanka. “If it’s possible to get livelihoods for people to stop them from getting involved in that kind of activity (prostitution) then it will not only help improve their socio-economic well-being, but also help save their lives.”

Haswell in a wide ranging interview with The Sunday Times FT spoke on the SCB’s ongoing global AIDS/HIV Awareness Campaign and the connected work in Sri Lanka and its corporate role in the forthcoming International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Colombo ICAAP from Aug 19 to 23.
Excerpts:

What is it about HIV/AIDS that made SCB act?
It started because we’re probably the biggest international bank in Africa, where the disease has the biggest impact. We didn’t have much choice but to confront what was going on and decided that, having learnt what needs to be done in many African countries, where we would have nearly 10% of our working population at any given time really effected either themselves personally or their families or they’re caring for someone whose sick. It had a huge impact on the workforce. We had to take this seriously, take measures to prevent further spread of the disease and measures to take care of a lot of the people who were directly impacted.

Then we decided to make it a global campaign because one of the things we learnt from Africa is to take early preventive action for everyone else in the world to make sure that they don’t go through the same trauma that many of the African countries have gone through.

What did SCB do in Africa to help?
Our strategy has been to tackle the question of awareness. That’s the starting point for any serious activity on the question of AIDS. Firstly people don’t know how they get it. You have to overcome that ignorance. People have to understand the disease and get rid of the mythologies surrounding it. They have to know that you can’t get it from hugging or kissing, but that you can get it from sexual intercourse, from needles or from being born to somebody who’s already contracted it. Then they need to get rid of the stigma attached to the disease so they can accept that this is a disease that we have to live with.

The other side of the coin is to work with people who have contracted it, who are victims, to get them to survive. Things like making available medicinal care for individuals so they can carry on relatively productive lives in the workforce, extending their lives for a significant period which is very possible with the modern drugs that are available. So it’s both aspects in which we’ve been involved heavily.

Are there any other projects like the one mentioned in Africa?
This fits very much with our general approach to wanting to build sustainable businesses and to be involved in communities. Prostitution is one of the “professions” that is getting impacted heavily by AIDS. So if it’s possible to get livelihoods for people to stop them from getting involved in that kind of activity then no one needs not to benefit from their socio-economic well-being, but will also help save their lives.

The way SCB approaches the problem is to let the country managers and the workforce there to try and be creative about their particular circumstances. There’s no prescription that says everybody must follow this or that strategy. The imperative is to find productive labour opportunities for people and that is the most important thing. It would be different strategies in different countries.

For example in Sri Lanka the prevalence of AIDS is fairly low so what I would be charged with doing here would be different to somebody in Uganda where they’ve got a real major problem and where many people potentially working for the bank will be suffering from the disease. We’re all doing different things, but it’s equally important to talk about prevention and strategies for raising awareness because we want to make sure that we stay as a low prevalence country. I have a different job to do than that of my counterparts in other parts of the world where the problems are slightly different, but what we do have is a very clear direction that this is a quality of SCB, one of our core sustainability activities.

What is the difference in approach to this problem between SCB and another organization?
The difference in all banks these days and all big cooperates is that they have to take responsibility for the communities that they operate within, so there are many organizations that have social responsibility activities going on. The difference in SCB is that we’ve decided to take a leadership role in a number of key areas and work very openly with other organizations, whether they be NGO’s or potential competitors of ours, to work for the common good. So it’s not about charitable activities as some corporates may believe. It’s more about how in the long term do we become and remain strong contributors to the community well-being in each of the franchises. Because we’ve been in most of these countries for over 100 years, we’ve grown as their economies and as their social environment have developed, so we feel ourselves very integral as a part of Sri Lanka, here. So because of that heritage we feel a responsibility to the communities, we know we understand them very well and are therefore able to take a leading role. So it’s not as though we’re newcomers and just want to make a bit of an impact and get a bit of publicity. It really is about sustainable and sustained involvement in the community.

What would you say to criticism that SCB and others like you, do this for publicity?
I haven’t seen any of those criticisms directly, the position we take is precisely the opposite. Actually if you want to do something for impact you can very quickly be caught out.

People aren’t stupid and they can see if you’re making a donation just to get a picture in the paper. That’s quite a short term thing. People will still take the money but that’s not really what this is about. Our philosophy is developed over many years. In a number of our business activities, we actually will turn away business if we think that business opportunity is damaging to the community that we operate within and if it goes against the sustainability of, for example, the environment. And the proof of the pudding is that we are prepared not to take certain business decisions that would otherwise be attractive because we chose not to go against our commitment to ethical practices.

I think we have a track record that you can examine. You can look at the work that we’ve done on the question of HIV/AIDS awareness, which has been going on for 10-15 years now. It’s not something that is a flash in the pan. And it’s not something that is easy. Taking the Sri Lankan context, HIV/AIDS is something that is not the top-of-mind publicity seeking issue. Frankly a lot of people don’t know much about it so there’s not a lot of easy cheap publicity to be had by participating. So we do this because we believe that there’s an issue out there that we believe Sri Lankans need to be aware of, and we’re very happy to cooperate with the government in sponsoring the ICAAP Conference this month to try and raise awareness and it’s not going to be getting cheap publicity.

What are your achievements in Sri Lanka?
Mainly what we’re trying to do is raise awareness. We’re not trying to cure the disease. We’re not trying to become a charity to take on the care of individuals. We look at ways in which the bank can raise awareness. We started with our in-house team and we’ve just got to the end of the second round of the complete training of all the staff that works for SCB. We’ve done that nearly twice now. We’ve built up a team of 10 or 15 “HIV/AIDS Champions” who are office staff members who have become compassionate about doing something to help the country and prevent the disease spreading. So we are giving time and resources, helping organize the training and the education of people. We’ve done this in a number of places, with students in universities, and we want to try and do more of that, encourage and train other people to become champions in their own organizations and then they can go on and educate other workforces, students etc. So that’s our strategy, not to get publicity. As you can see we don’t really get much publicity for that. It’s really about bringing a change by sustained activity of education. Of course we are a sponsor of the ICAAP conference and we’ll be bringing in about 200 people from all over Asia to join the conference and the discussions. And we are prepared to put our money where our mouth is as it were – and doing this as part of the two big global initiatives that we have. We are glad to make that contribution and to help in organizing that event as well.

Do you work in conjuncture with other companies in Sri Lanka?
Absolutely. At ICAAP, we are working with John Keells who are also sponsoring this event. One of the plans that we have is to extend that cooperation with any and every company in Sri Lanka potentially to set up a coalition amongst business people that will take seriously getting their own house in order to help train and educate and bring awareness to everybody working in their company so they can become Ambassadors in their own right. It is our plan to set up a broad coalition.

We don’t see any competition here; we’re not competing with any of the other banks or any of the other businesses here.
My feeling is that many, if not all; the companies in Sri Lanka are very keen to get involved in bringing about change because it’s actually in their own self interest as well.

If you compare what’s happened in some of these African countries, take South Africa where the biggest mining company, Anglo-American warned the world a few months ago that that they should learn from South Africa’s experience where five years ago they decided to leave the responsibility to the government for education and awareness.

And they are paying the price now as nearly 30% of the population is affected in some way by HIV/AIDS. So there would really be a huge economic impact if this disease were to get out of control and affect the workforce. They will suffer a big economic loss and that’s obviously of interest to the managers and shareholders of those companies.

What is the impact of your work in Sri Lanka?
We mostly see the impact through personal experiences. Let me take the example of the students. When we go and organize a training session for a few hours, which is very interactive and easy to understand. It’s not technical or a scientific discussion. For the first time people are starting to understand the practicalities of this disease, the simple things that can be done to prevent its spread. I think it’s seeing people suddenly wake up and understand. And all of a sudden they’re passionate about wanting to do something themselves, to take this on personally as a mission to go and tell their friends and to overcome one of the initial things which is ignorance and then the stigma and people really not wanting to talk about it. Getting them from that state of mind to one where they not only understand what’s going on and what it is they need to do and understand more about the disease, but they become prepared themselves to talk to their friends and to educate others. So that’s the biggest impact that we can see.

What challenges have you faced in implementing this programme in Sri Lanka?
I think it’s not that different to anywhere else where there is a natural conservatism to not want to talk about these sorts of issues. The consequences of that approach, that natural shyness to take this on can be very negative. They don’t want to talk about it; they don’t want to admit that there is an issue. That is the surest way that this disease will spread so. I think its overcoming that boundary of conservatism, which would be the key challenge, to get people to that point where they are prepared and comfortable to discuss these things and become more knowledgeable about them.

Was it easier to implement your programme here in Sri Lanka as compared to elsewhere in the world?
Every country is different and the fact that this is an open democratic country means that people are not afraid of having their say. We’ve been to many different countries where the normal social, political and economic debate is more constrained than others. So I would say that I don’t face any negative pressure. Of course you have a very positive government position in Sri Lanka which means that the official state policy is to campaign and to try and minimize the spread of the disease. There’s a big network of clinics around the country and there is often debate in the newspapers and so on. Also the Health Ministry officials are prepared to get involved and are very keen to push this agenda. I think that makes a huge difference if you’re in a country, and there were one or two in Africa, in denial almost. That’s much more challenging.

Are there any awareness raising programmes of note that you would like to mention?
There are through the state agencies. I think the Chambers of Commerce and many corporates have taken this very seriously, the International Labour Organization has been giving out very good material in both Sinhalese and Tamil for the public which very simply explained the realities of this disease. So there are a lot of programmes but I think the challenge we want to take on next is how to connect those resources and get them to the areas of most need. In Colombo definitely, but also outside in places like tea estates where I think almost 60% of the workers there haven’t heard of AIDS and if they haven’t heard of it, they can’t protect themselves against it. So I think there are vast areas of opportunities for us to spread the word and no shortage of resources. So I think our job is to get that supply and demand connected.

What are your future plans for Sri Lanka?
I think the biggest thing we will do is to bring together a business coalition. I would have ambitions to launch this at the ICAAP conference and we’ve been planning to do that with a number of other interested parties.

I think we’ve set ourselves some ambitious targets to get different companies to sign up to a pledge to educate their own workforce and undertake broader awareness projects right across the island. And I think this coalition will work very closely with the Ministry of Health, ILO and other bodies to try and fill that gap between where we see there is ignorance and connect that with the resource provided. It’s a very simple target to say lets get hundreds if not thousands of organizations signed up to this initiative.