For them, CSR is serious business too

Contrary to what some clueless minds speculate, the local auto industry doesn’t just exist to make sure we have another exasperating day going to the office, school, the mall or to buy the day’s marketing needs by selling as many cars as the populace can afford. In the same vein it’s not the presence of these cars per se that cause our daily woes of spending hours in stop and go traffic.

Have clueless minds considered that we just have an obsolete road network and the lack of roads, coupled with an ineffective mass transport system, cause the present traffic mess, and not just because there are too many cars.

Arguably, enough has been said to refute that very simplistic way of rationalizing the cause of our daily traffic woes by blaming the auto industry, which is regarded by many countries as an accurate barometer to determine their economic health.

I guess it’s about time we take a closer look at what our automobile industry has been seriously doing aside from providing the public mobility solutions and alternatives, like their CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility projects.

As a journalist covering the country’s automobile industry for a little over three decades, I have personal knowledge and experience of many of the industry players’ involvement in successful projects that have helped to improve the lives of Filipinos — and mostly done without fanfare.

Until the Society of Philippine Motoring Journalists (SPMJ), a gathering of distinguished print, broadcast and online journalists engaged in the motoring beat decided to provide these projects and their proponents the rightful fanfare to further encourage those into it to continue, and the few who have not, to join the bandwagon of good doers. 

What better way to achieve this goal than to give recognition to all those who are engaged in CSR projects and award those that excel.

Thus, the SPMJ Driven to Serve Awards were born.

Now on its 3rd staging, the ‘Driven to Serve CSR Awards’ is conceived by SPMJ to inform the public at large about the good deeds of most of those in the country’s automotive industry that go unnoticed and unrecognized. This being left undone, leads to unfair speculation that the auto sector is engaged in nothing else but selling vehicles. Which also leads further to the mistaken belief that the continued level of vehicle sales actually causes the horrendous traffic that the metropolis is experiencing on a daily basis.

The ultimate objective of the recognition and award-giving exercise is to encourage those automotive companies that still do not have CSR projects in their corporate make up, to start having one and those that are already engaged, to do better.

The Society of Philippine Motoring Journalists is an organization of editors, columnists, TV hosts and producers, and top-notch print, broadcast, radio and online journalists, all covering the motoring beat, which includes the automotive industry and motor sports.

Submission of entries has its deadline on Dec. 3, 2018 with the judging scheduled on Feb. 11, 2019. While the awards night during which the ultimate recognition for the automobile industry’s efforts to make life a little better for our countrymen is set for April 11, 2019.

Mabuhay!!! Be proud to be a Filipino.

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