JKH’s public campaign at bus stands to mark special day for women
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Campaign in buses
John Keells Foundation (JKF), the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of John Keells Group (JKH), initiated a public awareness campaign against sexual harassment, targeting commuters of public transport, in commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women which fell on November 25.
Over 120 staff volunteers from across JKH actively participated in the campaign carried out at four of Colombo’s busiest bus depots in Colombo – Pettah Central Bus Stand, Bastian Mawatha Private Bus Stand, Gunasinghepura Private Bus Stand and the Borella Bus stand, to paste stickers inside the buses and hand over information cards throughout the day, with the cooperation of the Sri Lanka Transport Board and the Western Province Provincial Road Passenger Transport Authority, a company media release said.
This campaign was focused on pasting 1,150 stickers in Sinhala and Tamil, with the warning that Sexual Harassment is a punishable offence under the Penal Code along with the emergency hotline of Sri Lanka Transportation Bureau to report harassment (1955) and underlining JKH’s individual and collective responsibility to build a society free of harassment.
Approximately 30,000 information cards were distributed amongst commuters. Speaking on the public campaign, Ms. Carmeline Jayasuriya – Head of Operations CSR, JKF explained that “while the bus campaign was the first initiative within our public phase since the launch of the project in November 2014, awareness sessions have been conducted in all sectors of the John Keells Group including Head Office, Leisure, Consumer Foods & Retail, IT, Transportation and Financial Services as well as external communities such as lawyers, police officers and school children and reached over 13,000 persons”.