COMPANIES give back to their customers in different ways. In the case of Western Union, giving back meant setting up a US$50 million (RM168.5 million) global CSR programme jointly with the Western Union Foundation to help migrant workers.

Western Union set up the programme in 2007 and so far, it has helped some 100,000 individuals worldwide through entrepreneurship resources and personal finance schemes.

Migrant workers are the company’s core customers. Last year, more than US$6.4 billion in remittances were sent out of Malaysia, much of it by an estimated 1.9 million foreign workers living in Malaysia — largely Indonesians, Filipinos, Bangladeshis, Nepalese and Vietnamese.

“Most (migrant workers) are not well-to-do. They need a lot of support when they come to the host country. Our primary work is towards migrants,” Ratheesh Kumar, Western Union regional vice-president South Asia and Southeast Asia, said in an interview in December.

Ratheesh said there are three pillars when it comes to Western Union’s CSR programme. The first is to support the migrants’ families in their home countries; the second is to provide education for the migrant or the migrant’s family; and the third is to provide migrants with entrepreneurship skills so that migration would eventually be a choice, and not a necessity.

Education is one of the most basic needs, and Western Union has been working with non-governmental organisation Hope Worldwide to help meet the education needs of migrant workers’ children.

Last year, Western Union gave 100 education grants worth RM1,000 each to children of migrant workers in Malaysia. In 2008, it disbursed 200 grants.

Awareness of the programme was created through word of mouth and last year, the number of applications grew to 20,600 from 19,000 in 2008.

Domestic helper Kusmawati, 34, has two school-going children aged six and 14 in Jakarta who have benefited from the grant. She said the education grant gives her peace of mind while she works here to support her family in Indonesia.

Most of the grants are used to support the education of migrant workers’ children in their home country, said Darick Wong, Hope Worldwide’s country/programme director in a telephone interview on Jan 26.

The education grant is also given to migrant communities in Singapore and Brunei. While Western Union does not have exact figures, Ratheesh said the breakdown in terms of nationality generally reflects the nationality breakdown of the migrant population in the country.

“What normally happens is that in any country that we run this, the response will naturally come in almost the same proportion as the number of migrants who are there in that country. In Malaysia, the bulk of migrant communities is from Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Vietnam,” he said.

Apart from the education grants, Western Union runs various types of CSR initiatives across the region. In Singapore, the company works with Hope Worldwide Singapore to provide language proficiency classes and care-giving skills to migrants from the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, China and Thailand. The programme is in its fourth year now and has seen the participation of 2,000 migrant workers.

Western Union has also provided financial literacy programmes for migrant workers in the Philippines in collaboration with the Colayco Foundation.

The money transfer firm also gives financial assistance to countries throughout the region hit by natural disasters. It donated close to US$200,000 to Indonesia immediately after the earthquake in Padang on Sept 30 last year. It also initiated a month-long zero-fee offer for Indonesians in Malaysia to transfer money back home.

On how it tracks the effectiveness of its CSR programmes, Ratheesh said that this is where choosing the right partner plays a crucial role.

“We make sure we work with the right partners, those experienced enough in supporting the right causes. Secondly, as an organisation primarily dealing with the migrant consumer base, Western Union is very close to the community and thus we are able to establish their needs,” he said.



This article appeared on the Management page, The Edge Financial Daily, Mar 8, 2010