Vodafone 2015 Annual Report Download - page 33

Instant Classroom launched
During 2015 the Vodafone Foundation launched
Instant Classroom, a digital “school in a box” that
can be set up in a matter of minutes, helping
to give children and young people in some of the
world’s largest and most poorly resourced refugee
camps the opportunity to continue their education.
The Instant Classroom is shipped in a case which
is equipped with a laptop, 25 tablets pre-loaded with
educational software, a projector, a speaker and
a hotspot modem with 3G connectivity.
The Instant Classroom was developed
to support the continued roll-out of the Vodafone
Foundation’s Instant Network Schools programme
in partnership with the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees. These ‘schools’
are solar powered centres which provide access
to digital educational content and the internet via
tablets. So far, 16 Instant Network Schools have
been established in Kenya, DRC and South Sudan,
beneting over 26,000 children and 500 teachers.
Over the next two years the Instant Network Schools
programme will be extended to support additional
schools in refugee camps in Kenya, DRC and
Tanzania with the aim of reaching 60,000 students.
M-Pesa is at the heart of many of our
transformational solutions in other areas,
particularly in agriculture and health. A new
collaboration with the National Rural Health
Mission and Rural Employment Guarantee
uses M-Pesa to disburse government benets
in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand in India.
In Tanzania, our collaboration with the
Commercial Bank of Africa, enables M-Pesa
customers to access interest-bearing savings
accounts and small loans.
Enhancing our
enterprise customers’
sustainability efforts
Our enterprise customers expect
us to support their commitment to operate
in a sustainable way. In the 2015 nancial
year, over £1.5 billion worth of commercial
bids and contracts included a sustainability
performance assessment.
We are piloting and scaling mobile solutions
through the agriculture value chain with three
of our largest enterprise customers. Together,
we are exploring how mobile money and data,
and M-Pesa specically, can help to mobilise
distribution channels and create jobs, as well
as how it can improve the efciency and
affordability of water distribution in rural India.
We are also rolling out a mobile solution
to enable Anglo American, an international
mining company, to engage directly with local
communities on a monthly basis, in order
to gain real-time feedback on the impact
of their operations.
Privacy and human rights
The amount of data and personal information
transmitted over our networks continues
to increase. Our commitment to protecting
that information and respecting our customers’
right to privacy and freedom of expression
remains critical in retaining their trust.
We are one of the rst communications
operators in the world to provide a
country-by-country analysis of demands
received for access to our customers’ data
by law enforcement authorities, through
the publication of our Law Enforcement
Disclosure report.
This report explains our principles and
approach, as well as the policies and processes
we follow when responding to demands from
government agencies and authorities. It also
sets out the framework within which we believe
governments should act. For more information
see vodafone.com/sustainability.
During 2014, Vodafone chaired the
Telecommunications Industry Dialogue on
Freedom and Privacy of Expression, which
continues to work in collaboration with the
Global Network Initiative (‘GNI’) to address the
issues of privacy and freedom of expression as
they relate to the telecommunications sector.
Wherever we operate, we work to ensure
thatwe do not infringe human rights through
our operations or business relationships.
We continue to work with our suppliers
and others in our industry to raise ethical,
labour and environmental standards in our
supply chain. We now enable some of our
suppliers’ workers to give direct, anonymous
feedback on their working conditions, using
their mobile phones, in collaboration with
Good World Solutions. Responses to the
surveys are aggregated anonymously and
provided directly to Vodafone and the supplier
to identify areas for improvement.
JustTextGiving
JustTextGiving by Vodafone is the headline
programme of the Vodafone Foundation in the
UK. It enables individuals and charities to collect
donations via text and is available to all mobile
customers on any UK network. Donors simply use
a unique code to send donations via text and 100%
of the amount donated goes to the UK registered
charity. JustTextGiving is now being used by around
207,900 fundraisers and 21,600 charities and
has helped raise more than £27 million since its
inception in May 2011.
Our Instant Network Schools programme
in Kenya, DRC and South Sudan have
benetted over 26,000 children
Overview Strategy review Performance Governance Financials Additional information Vodafone Group Plc
Annual Report 2015
31