In times of crisis, three groups always emerge—those in need, those who want to help and organizations that act as force multipliers of assistance. Since the COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed the London Borough of Havering, which covers 18 wards and is home to 260,000 residents, we’ve seen this scenario play out.

Getting and giving help to those in need. Over the past year, infrastructure has been severely stretched by the pandemic. Individuals across the borough need emergency support in the form of food shopping, wellness checks, financial help, prescription pickups and transport to doctors’ visits or vaccination centers. And individuals who want to volunteer and show their good will, either part- or full-time, seek ways to help. Then there are the organizations that can exponentially increase levels of support but need to be brought into the effort.

Joining forces to fill the gap. Without a central registry point, a sense of inertia illuminated a clear gap between the needs of Havering and the available options to mobilize care—but not for long. Wanting to help the community, Cognizant devised Cognizant Assist, a platform that links volunteers to people and organizations who need help.

The open-source technology platform, developed pro bono over a period of 2,516 hours by Cognizant’s digitally skilled volunteers, integrates seamlessly with Havering’s existing community hub. The new platform helps coordinate the rollout of vaccines to residents and connect care, chat buddy, dog walking and transportation volunteers. To date, more than 450 blood pressure testing devices have been dispersed to 30 different surgeries thanks to the newly implemented system, and more than 2,500 individuals and organizations are registered.

Making connections with Cognizant Assist. The Havering Community Hub, powered by Cognizant Assist, mobilizes and deploys community members based on what they need or can offer others, so the journey to get or provide help can begin.

“Cognizant Outreach is an employee volunteering platform that brings together skilled, passionate community-minded associates to drive digital inclusion across multiple sectors of society. Cognizant Assist is the perfect example of everything Outreach stands for, and I am grateful to all the volunteers who came together for the timely innovation and successful efforts in bringing the community together for a humanitarian cause.”

—Padmasini Dayananda, Global Head of ESG, Cognizant Outreach

Going forward, Havering Council plans to roll out the platform to support other organizations in the borough, building a resilient community fabric that benefits the people, organizations and societies in which we live and work.

Cognizant Outreach volunteers believe in community potential. To help build an inclusive society, volunteers support people with disabilities and provide livelihood and vocational training to marginalized communities, women and youth. Working in multiple settings they help those most in need have a better quality of life, increase their confidence, connect with others and push harder to challenge themselves.

Major initiatives

Volunteering during the COVID-19 crisis: Thanks to virtual technologies, the COVID-19 pandemic has not stopped Outreach volunteers from helping communities in India, the Philippines, Singapore, the U.K., the U.S. and elsewhere.

Food packaging and distribution: Outreach volunteers in the U.S. actively support large-scale food packaging and distribution initiatives, using nutritious food to help tackle malnutrition across the country. Thousands of families have received food packed by Cognizant associates.

Leveling the playing field: Outreach volunteers help the disabled excel in their chosen sport—wheelchair basketball or tennis, Paralympic swimming, boccia, cricket, football and chess for the visually challenged. Volunteers frequently partner with nonprofits to organize large-scale parasport tournaments.

Animal welfare: Outreach partners with animal shelters to raise awareness for the protection of animals as well as provide safe and healthy living environments for them. Various initiatives are underway, from cleaning pet shelters to caring for injured animals.

Senior digital literacy: Digital Clinics are designed to help senior citizens thrive in an increasingly digital world. During these sessions, Outreach volunteers help seniors gain familiarity with digital devices and everyday apps that can help make their lives better.

Livelihood support: Our rural initiatives encompass schools, institutions and marginalized communities grappling with livelihood challenges. From teaching vocational skills to spreading awareness, volunteers help community members lead dignified lives.

Blood donation: Regular camps enable associates to donate blood. In 2019, associates in 27 cities across the globe donated 6,371 units of blood.

Military to civilian: In Denmark and India, volunteers support employability programs designed to help military veterans transition into civilian careers. They educate veterans on the different job opportunities available, mentoring them on how to achieve their corporate aspirations.

Our involvement with parasports began in 2013, when Cognizant employees volunteered to support a state-level cricket tournament for the visually challenged held in Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India. Since then, Outreach volunteers have extended their support to seven parasports—wheelchair basketball, wheelchair tennis, Paralympic swimming, boccia, cricket, football and chess for the visually challenged. Partnering with different NGOs, associates have helped organize large-scale parasport tournaments, including the T20 Blind Cricket World Cup, state-level swimming and volleyball tournaments for the visually challenged, and athletic meets for thousands of children.

Wheelchair basketball: One of our most significant partnerships is with the Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India (WBFI). Working with the group, our volunteers have helped organize six editions of the National Championships as well as several training camps and regional tournaments across India. Four volunteers have gone on to train in the tough wheelchair variant of the sport. Their roles today include coach of the Indian national team, player in the state team, manager of the state team and city coordinator.

Boccia: In partnership with a Chennai-based NGO, volunteers reach out to people with developmental disabilities to coach them in the game of boccia. Volunteers undergo a certified training program to prepare to serve as coaches at four special schools in Chennai.

Grooming para-athletes in soft skills: Recognizing the need to groom para-athletes for opportunities apart from sport, our volunteers conduct soft-skill training. Volunteers recently trained male and female cricketers from the Blind Cricket Association of Tamil Nadu, India, on teamwork, decision-making, adaptability and leadership, among other skills. Every week, volunteers in Mumbai, India, conduct spoken English sessions for players on the state wheelchair basketball team. These sessions have been immensely beneficial for the players in their personal, professional and sports careers.

Supporting special athletes in Singapore: Outreach volunteers in Singapore regularly coach athletes from the Special Olympics in weekly badminton training.

Living in the outskirts of the Indian village of Irumbai were 22 impoverished families. Referred by a social worker family member, a Cognizant employee and his friends visited the area and were appalled by what they found—rudimentary huts lacking basic facilities and few jobs for many community members. This motivated the Outreach volunteers to act.

Volunteers soon realized that the greatest need was a sustainable livelihood for the villagers. Because the community had little exposure to ways of earning a living, many continued to rely on charity.

On their weekly visits, volunteers began to address the issue. They guided the men of the community to begin their own small businesses or find employment at the construction sites nearby. The women were taught by skilled volunteers to make handicrafts like flowers and bouquets using paper and nylon, and earrings and key chains from quilled paper.

It wasn’t long before the women were making beautiful and intricate handicrafts on their own. These crafts are now sold in the market, and many are presented as corporate gifts to Cognizant customers who visit our software development centers.

“It is more than just a bunch of nylon flowers. It is my first income ever,” says Selvi, a member of the Irumbai community.

We believe creativity and innovation, coupled with STEM, are essential to producing the products, services and solutions we will need in the future.

In the U.S., we partner with several organizations to encourage STEM learning for middle school students between the ages of 8 and 13. Our associates teach skills such as website development and design. “Code Camp” volunteers provide coding instruction on a weekly basis. Cognizant associates also conduct webinars to inspire children to learn about interesting jobs related to careers they may want to pursue in the future.

Outreach U.K.’s primary objective is to create an inclusive, level playing field for every person, irrespective of age, gender, race, socio-economic background or ability. The council’s “Social Digital Empowerment Program” aims to drive digital inclusion strategically. One of its objectives is inspiring younger generations to embrace careers and futures in STEM disciplines. Volunteers conduct “Exploring and Experimental Learning Gyms” to encourage young minds to grow from being users of technology to innovators of the future. In 2019-2020, our U.K. council influenced over 250 students in the United Kingdom and Ireland using curiosity programs such as hands-on digital labs, micro-bit programming, design thinking workshops and digital art.

Under the “Smart Nation” program in Singapore, volunteers organize STEM workshops to make technologies such as artificial intelligence, analytics and internet of things interesting and fun. Children learn how they can leverage the digital technologies that our volunteers know well to pursue their passions in the arts, science and humanities.

Between 2016 and 2020, volunteers reached out to thousands of students in Singapore, teaching them to code drones, design and develop mobile apps, and build their own chatbots. The outcomes have been very encouraging, with more than 80%* of students expressing a greater interest in pursuing STEM subjects and improved confidence in applying STEM concepts.

Across the globe, volunteers take a hands-on approach to STEM teaching, encouraging children to address socio-economic challenges innovatively.

*Data from select STEM programs

“Einstein Hunt” is a global science and innovation contest that Cognizant Outreach conducts to foster scientific thinking among students. Our volunteers in India, Singapore, the Philippines, and the U.K. help children build science projects. Winning students from India are given a one-of-a-kind opportunity to incubate and test their ideas at the Agastya International Foundation’s innovation hub in Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh, India. The incubation period involves five rigorous days of ideation, critical thinking and concept building—and learning all it takes to refine their ideas into working prototypes.

The idea behind Einstein Hunt is to encourage students to think more about the challenges they face and then brainstorm creative solutions using the scientific method. Frequently, the problems students tackle involve issues they face at home, such as waste segregation, fluctuating power and unclean water. Discovering cost-effective farming techniques that use organic pesticides, brainstorming gesture-controlled cars that run on sound waves and creating low-cost projectors that help low-income schools are some of the recent Einstein Hunt contest findings.

“Participating in Einstein Hunt has been an enriching experience for me. It has given me a rare opportunity to get hands-on training for my science project which I personally feel passionate about,” says Smita Maity, student and one of the Einstein Hunt 2018 National Winners.

In 2019, Cognizant’s Talent Acquisition Group (TAG) in the United Arab Emirates organized a “Career Readiness Workshop” in Dubai. The team led a workshop for a group of young female scholars on the employability skills needed to enter the workforce. Sharing recruitment tips and tricks, volunteers ensured all participants left the workshop with not only professional LinkedIn profiles but also aspirations for a successful career. The team has continued these sessions, collaborating with different partner organizations and universities to reach out to students.

During COVID-19, TAG piloted its first virtual career readiness session with 16 university students. The team ran interactive, hour-long virtual sessions, training students on resume writing and personal branding through social media. The response from students has been very encouraging.

Lead volunteer Nidhi Srivastava says, “It is a very humbling and enriching experience to be part of these initiatives. Interacting with the new age students helps me realize the importance of upskilling ourselves continuously before I reach the ‘plateau.’ Recently, I also had the opportunity to conduct mock interviews for a few candidates with hearing impairment from Mumbai, India. It was an overwhelming experience.”

Volunteers who coached and mentored children over several years realized that their efforts would be incomplete if the high school students could not afford to attend college. The Outreach Scholarship Program was launched in 2012 to address this problem, and between then and 2020, more than 2,100 gifted students have been awarded scholarships to pursue higher education.

After clearing an eligibility evaluation and interview process conducted by our volunteers, around 500 scholars are added to the initiative every year. Over 90% of Outreach scholars are first-generation graduates, and 72% of them are girls.

For many scholars, the switch from high school to college is more pronounced due to the change in the language of study from a local vernacular to English. To ease the transition, scholars are invited back each year for regular skill-building programs, such as spoken English training, interview skills and mentoring sessions. Additionally, close to 700 students have completed the Microsoft Digital Literacy certification.

The program has helped many scholars graduate and secure employment. As of July 2020, 15 of them are working at Cognizant. Malathi Sivakumar from Coimbatore is an ex-Outreach scholar who has been with Cognizant since 2018. After completing her studies at the Government Higher Secondary School, Coimbatore, she received a full scholarship to pursue her B.E. degree.

“Outreach helped me pursue my dreams,” says Sivakumar. “As an Outreach volunteer now, it fills me with great joy to pass on the knowledge to junior scholars.”

Individuals, communities and nonprofit organizations around the world frequently grapple with a lack of formal skills and a shortage of resources. Cognizant Outreach volunteers fill in these gaps by conducting workshops on resume writing, brainstorming project management solutions, helping nonprofit managers understand contracts and providing skills training.

Major initiatives

Design thinking workshops: Our volunteers conduct design thinking workshops to generate innovative solutions for a wide range of scenarios. Using intuitive and analytical thinking, they help nonprofits address specific challenges, reframe questions and integrate stakeholder engagement into their decision-making process.

Hackathons for social good: In a hackathon, coders, engineers, designers and others come together for a day or weekend to build a website, app or system for a local nonprofit. Each Outreach hackathon provides an intense working environment that pushes participants beyond their typical learning boundaries and encourages them to tackle socio-economic problems.

Digital advisory programs: Digital technologies can transform how nonprofits connect with clients and create community value. Cognizant volunteers offer their professional skills to help nonprofits manage their databases, use the right productivity tools and create effective websites.

Career readiness workshops: Volunteers lead a variety of initiatives to mentor students and individuals to help get them ready for a professional career. From helping them build an online business profile to conducting career awareness sessions, volunteers introduce a world of new opportunities to these aspirants.

Providing medical advice: Associates who are qualified medical doctors volunteered to support a special COVID-19 telephone helpline in Mumbai, India, providing critical, non-prescriptive advice to citizens, including those from underserved communities.

Using technology for community support: Cognizant employees from the U.K. Digital Engineering team developed a COVID community support platform. The pilot implementation for the volunteer taskforce at Nairn, Scotland, supported over 400 volunteers and served an entire town of beneficiaries.

A survey of our social impact partners revealed that one reason for low digital adoption in the sector was the lack of adequate digital skills among staff. Recognizing the need for a customized intervention to improve digital competencies, volunteers designed specific programs to help nonprofits improve their data and program management practices.

Microsoft excel for non-profits: Volunteers conduct basic, intermediate and advanced Excel training to enable NGO staff to learn the most critical functions to improve productivity. In 2020, volunteers in India, the Philippines and Singapore reached out to more than 190 participants from 60 organizations. Over 90% of the participants shared that the workshops helped them significantly improve their skills.

Agile forn non-profits: Cognizant’s subject-matter experts help introduce non-profits to agile methodologies and tools. This knowledge helps our social impact partners be more flexible, fast and efficient. As NGOs globally struggle to adjust to the disruption caused by COVID-19, workshops such as these provide timely guidance on how agile/scrum methods can help improve crisis response. In 2020, volunteers assisted 28 non-profits from India and Singapore.

Data management best practices: Non-profits often need help understanding what data to capture, where to capture it from and how to use it effectively for decision-making. Volunteers from Cognizant provide data consulting services to NGO partners. The sessions have helped the non-profits build better dashboards, reduce time on data management, better engage volunteers and donors, and measure and improve program outcomes.

Advanced presentation skills: These sessions, anchored by presentation skills experts from Cognizant, help non-profit leadership teams refine their fundraising pitches with stakeholders. In 2020, we helped improve the skills of more than 340 NGO staff members from 94 social impact partners. Across the globe, we continue to reach out to non-profits to help them through customized sessions on digital content, cloud, web design and mobile apps.

Outreach volunteers are well equipped to help their communities during the COVID-19 crisis. Using virtual technologies such as teleconferencing, online workshops, distant learning and other digital tools, they reach out to provide assistance where it is most needed around the world.

Operating helplines: Working with NGOs and community kitchens, volunteers in Coimbatore, India, helped supply more than 200,000 meals to stranded daily-wage laborers, the homeless and senior citizens. Our volunteers have participated in similar helplines to support vulnerable communities in Chennai, Kochi and Hyderabad. In Chennai, volunteers assisted in contact tracing activities of those diagnosed COVID-19 positive. They called relevant contacts over the phone, recording their details in an online portal for healthcare staff to follow up and carry out quarantine procedures.

Employability training for people with disabilities: Recognizing the role that employment can play as a leveler, Outreach partnered with an NGO in Chennai to co-create the “LinkAbility” initiative in 2017. The sessions, anchored by volunteers and experts from Cognizant’s Academy and HR teams, are part of month-long workshop sessions on aptitude, resume building, communication and interview skills to help people with disabilities become job-ready. As the pandemic unfolded, volunteers started conducting these sessions online. Participants joined virtual classrooms and received guidance from Cognizant trainers, after which they reported feeling less inhibited, more confident and more aware of the opportunities available to them. Volunteers also conducted English coaching for visually challenged students to help them during lockdown.

Digitizing content for the visually challenged: Volunteers across locations have scaled up their efforts in digitizing content for the visually challenged. Using the “Accessital”  technology platform they proofread and record material for conversion into audio books for digital libraries.