MAS doubles empowerment commitment to UN Foundation

01 Oct '20

3 min read

Pic: MAS Holding

MAS has renewed its commitment to empower more of its employees by extending its original undertaking to provide health and wellbeing education. The apparel solutions provider is also focusing on sexual and reproductive health; and awareness on gender-based violence, to its employees and the communities adjacent to their manufacturing locations.

Having surpassed the target of 10,000 beneficiaries since its commitment in June 2019, MAS doubled its commitment to reach 20,000 beneficiaries by the original 2021 timeline. The company, headquartered in Sri Lanka, formalised their new commitment at the virtual parallel event of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly co-hosted by the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) and the Universal Access Project of the UN Foundation (UNF), according to a media statement by MAS.

MAS was one of the 11 trailblazing global companies that committed to improving the health and well-being of its workers and community members around the world in 2019 through the UNF’s Universal Access Project and its Private Sector Action for Women’s Health and Empowerment Initiative. The company outlined bold, measurable, and time-bound plans to empower its employees through highly focused programmes on women’s health, sexual, and reproductive health and rights and on gender-based violence, anchored to its globally acclaimed hallmark women’s empowerment platform, ‘Women Go Beyond’ in alignment with SDGs 3 and 5, among others.

With women making up 70 per cent of the company’s 99,000 global workforce, MAS identified a fundamental requirement to support and empower its female employees very early in its operation, before it was defined as a corporate responsibility. Stand-alone initiatives that helped women, soon started showing results and began to scale into larger, long-term programmes. MAS began to invest heavily in women’s career development, skill development, and more importantly in their health and wellbeing, creating awareness on sexual and reproductive health and rights, menstrual health, nutrition, pre and post-natal care and issues surrounding gender-based violence, the company said in a press release.

While COVID-19 resulted in catastrophic economic and health impacts around the world, MAS was able to leverage its existing WGB framework to reach out to female employees and support them through multi-faceted programmes that also addressed possible escalations of domestic and gender-based violence (GBV) during pandemic-related lockdowns. MAS was able to enhance the quality of its existing health-related WGB programmes provided for all employees in 2019 while also introducing highly focused programmes on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), non-communicable diseases (NCD) and life skills through its 2019 commitment.

In addition to the health and wellness programmes focusing on hygiene, nutrition, family planning, pre and post-natal care, which have been carried out over the last decade, MAS has partnered with the Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka to train in-house trainers to deliver workshops on sexual and reproductive health and rights and NCDs. A Legal Rights Awareness Programme conducted at an MAS facility in Bangladesh educated 2,800 women on domestic violence as a consequence of early marriage and provided legal aid for those affected.

MAS’ social sustainability strategy is well aligned with its business strategy and is driven by its senior leadership. Dedicated teams across the group work on identified focus areas and drive necessary interventions to address the many gaps in access, education and services faced by women across global locations.
Additionally, a total number of 1,167 female employees of MAS graduated from the Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement (P.A.C.E.) programme launched by Gap nurturing their professional and leadership skills.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (GK)

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