Epyllion Foundation: 2021 and beyond with Arshad Chowdhury, COO, Epyllion Foundation
Epyllion Group started its journey as a house of Readymade Garments (RMG), manufacturing and exporting knit apparels since 1994. It has the state of art vertically integrated garments manufacturing facility which ensures one-stop service to the buyers of Europe, USA, Asia and Africa.
The foundation of the group is based on ethical trading and welfare of the society. To implement this Epyllion Foundation is formed as a trust. The trust has been formed to look after the welfare of society and its people in the form of social business, donations, charity, school, clinic, orphanage, etc. The foundation firmly believes that setting-up new industries and creating employment opportunities is the best form of serving the society. Epyllion Group has been implementing different actions through the fund of Epyllion Foundation keeping in mind to attain the SDGs adopted by the United Nations. Epyllion Foundation is the trust under Epyllion Group incepted on April 2011.
Epyllion Foundation
As you will give us an overview of Epyllion Foundation, Let us start with, What does ‘Corporate social responsibilities’ mean to you?
Arshad Chowdhury
I personally think, Corporate social responsibilities means It's a payback from the corporate to the society. And here's where the question comes, why the payback? - Well, Corporate social responsibilities derived from a concept like this, the business which has been established , its main ingredients comes from the social structure. Like, the biggest motto of our business is Human Spirit. And Human spirit comes from the human resource, And where the human resource comes from? It's coming from society. There’s no other supply chain which contains human resources.
Then We also have the environment in the workplace, to establish our business. Because We have a contradictory situation with the environment when it comes to manufacturing. So we have to repair the environment also. We also have another motto, that we will be a responsible manufacturer. We can't make an effort to establish our factory as a good one by doing damage to the environment. We have some responsibilities coming from the environment.
And yes these responsibilities do not come from the tax or any type of financial benefits. These are our social liability. We are working for the sake of that very supply chain which is benefiting us. It’s a payback from the business to our supply chain. It's not the business supply chain, it's the social and environmental supply chain. I am dependent on society for good human resources. That's why I personally think any business should have these liabilities but yes it’s not coming from any legal requirements, it's only our responsibility.
Epyllion Foundation
But at the end of the day every company has some legal or reporting requirements or you can say every organisation has some CSR goals. Which are the CSR goals of Epyllion’s CSR Department?
Arshad Chowdhury
The main goal is to learn some impactful programs from society, we want to bring some impactful change to society. If my business doest give value to the society it belongs to, my business won't survive in that society. I think we need to build a very progressive, very dynamic, Ethically driven society and then we can run a business in this society together. And here's our first objective, to insert a value to the society, run those programs in the society which will change the society in a positive way. Like, Sports. We want to use sports to establish a healthy society. As the young generation can get away from the dangerous influence of drugs. We are arranging different age level football tournaments. Sports will also reshape their thoughts in a healthy way.
Secondly we want to work for the environment too. Yes we have some limitations, But we will try our best to bring some positive change in terms of reserving the environment.
Thirdly, We want to work for Education. By education I'm not pointing to theoretical education. Im talking about technical and life oriented education. We want to bring life oriented education within our CSR program. It’s very important to us. Because when the students are getting out from the universities after graduating they are not well prepared for the job market. Because of the lack of skills they have. So, if they can develop these skills before they are becoming a job candidate in the market, then you will find a solution for unemployment. So, these are the main focus of our CSR department, as it will bring some positive changes to the society.
Epyllion Foundation
Lets become more specific. KHEYA is your program for education. Where did the idea come from?
Arshad Chowdhury
Current COO of Sailor (Md. Rezaul Kabir) was the core of the CSR department back then, he came up with the whole idea. Thanks to him, he worked so hard to make this program sustainable.
Now see, We are the manufacturer. It's a labour oriented, human resource oriented sector. So we thought, how can I bring some positive change to the life of the labour, the operator of my company? - Do i want my operator's son to become an operator of my company? No, I never want that. I wish that the operator can raise his son in a much better way than he was raised. And here the reality is if he wants to take his family to the next level , he needs a boat. Which boat will help him pass the passage. And this is the KHEYA(Boat). We wish this boat will help our workers to pass the river of poverty. Hope this boat will take his next generation to the brighter side of the river. And this boat will do it by making his child educated. And we also have some workers who are currently studying. This boat will help them also.
Epyllion Foundation
What is the main focus of KHEYA?
Arshad Chowdhury
Well, KHEYA was only a financial aid in the first place. But now we have brought the guidance part too. Because they can't pass the river only with financial assistance, proper guidance is also needed. So we brought guidance here too. We broaden the scope of guidance also. As we started KHEYA a long time ago, it is more mature now. KHEYA is also working at University level, in higher studies too.
We guide the beneficiaries which department should they choose for higher studies. We want to make this program educational. To guide the beneficiaries to the right way.
We need more skilled people. So have a large human population, But all of them are not skilled. We want to make sure that they can earn the right education which will make him an entrepreneur. Because an entrepreneur will create more jobs. If all the young people start searching for a job, who will take the responsibility to create them? That's why skills are very important. We have FM radio, we need some skilled sound engineers. We are promoting a business too, named Sheba.xyz. And sheba is promoting the SME service providers. These are creating some small entrepreneurs. Here in this new normal, These types of services are very important. And in the future we want to run a joint venture skill development program with sheba, and those skills will help grow sheba too. Our main focus is to reduce the unemployment problem of Bangladesh by developing more skills among the youths.
Epyllion Foundation
Not only skills, I saw you are also working on different types of social aspects too. What about the project Noyon Tori?
Arshad Chowdhury
Noyon Tori has a unique objective. If you look at the rural areas of Bangladesh, no proper health care services are there. If someone wants to get proper treatment can get it there. Suppose someone needs to get an operation on his eyes, if so, he needs to come all the way to Dhakka to get appointed and to get the proper treatment. So Noyon tori plays its role here by helping the rural community within the rural area. In this project our main focus is health.
We're planning to build a partnership network between us and some hospitals who will work for the same purpose. Noyon tori works for the rural community and gives support with eye health. Eye heath is not taken seriously, especially in the remote areas. So we established nayan tori hoping it is doing what we wanted it to do.
Epyllion Foundation
Great! You have lots of projects running, if we start talking about them will take a half day to finish this conversation. Let me ask you one last question about another project. Let's talk about the Epyllion Group football development program, which we were talking about before the interview. What's the objective of that project?
Arshad Chowdhury
The objective of this program comes from the lifestyle of bengali culture. When we were kids, we used to play so professionally, I also was a sports lover. So we thought, why not bring sport to our workspace too? Because sports does not only entertain you, it also teaches you some different aspects of life, it teaches you to take challenges. Teaches you to respect the opponent. When we see that the next generation is not so interested in outdoor sports, it hurts us. They are spending their leisure time doing something which is not doing anything good to them, for example we can say, some of them are getting drug addicted.
We need to make awareness from each and every level. Outdoor sports should be encouraged by the family, by the society, by the school and colleges. I don't know how many school cricket tournaments are there now? Not many. I remember when I was a kid there were so many cricket tournaments taking place.
Sports can make you a great human being, and that's why we think we need to give our next generation the scope of sports, not drugs. In my life, sport is kind of my daily routine thing. Every single day I'm doing something for sports, whether I'm playing or I'm doing something for sports. And I think sports lead me to a good and honest life that I wanted. Sports helps people see life from different perspectives.
From our early age we saw so many players in dhaka premier league from narayanganj if not half of the players from here. And we want to bring back that tradition. Of course, not only Narayanganj, but the whole country is also our focus. We made a team which selected the players from 64 districts from bangladesh, Good news is that that made up the under 15 bangladesh team, and which became SAAF champion. And I think we have a lot more to gain from sports.
We are not only focusing on cricket we’re also focusing on Football. Football is the game of our heart. We can bring football to an international level. That requires a proper plan, that requires a school football tournament. We believe eve teasing, drugs everything will be defeated by sports. Because sports makes your lifestyle ideal. Makes you more aware of your mental and physical health. You need to sleep early, wake up early, do exercises, Every good practice comes into your life.
Epyllion Foundation
Well. Let's talk about the effort you put in when the pandemic started, an epyllion group started supporting from the very beginning to face the pandemic in bangladesh.
Arshad Chowdhury
Yes, We are early stage fighters. I want to thank Mr. Nazmul for this. He managed it in a very structured way. And all of his team members, they did it very well. They brought the equipment at a very early stage. We think it is our social responsibility. When society is in need of our help, we need to step up for it. We love this society, Epyllion is our family, we have the power, and we want to use this power to help this society. So we did it. Our team maintained it very well, the set up was very good, we tried to support the doctors and all the frontline fighters.
Epyllion Foundation
Can you please explain shortly for our readers what type of initiatives you took for corona pandemic?
Arshad Chowdhury
The initiative we took first was managing PPE. There was a scarcity of PPE in our country. We imported the PPEs from China and distributed them to the frontline warrior. We also distributed food to the doctors, who worked day-night, not even had the chance to go home. We helped them with food. We tried to motivate them. So, we successfully helped the frontline fighters in the covid pandemic, and this is our biggest achievement in the pandemic.
Epyllion Foundation
Where do you want to see the Epyllion Foundation in the future as a CFO now?
Arshad Chowdhury
From the very beginning we wanted to do the work as an institution. We want to run some long term programme, not something short term. Then we also have a goal that we want to take it to an international level. We need more infrastructure for this, we need more partnership for this. I have a dream that one day epyllion foundation will work so widely that it will need its own CEO. Who will be dedicated to only Epyllion Foundation. Definitely we will be there in the backend, but we want someone more dedicated. I think this foundation has tremendous potential which we haven't managed to unearth yet which will not only work nationwide but crossboard also. This is what we are aiming to do.