Employees of GSK lend a hand to neighbourhood school

A brighter, more welcoming atmosphere greeted students arriving for classes at the Kandawala Navodya Maha Vidyalaya Ratmalana recently, following a facelift given to the school by the staff of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Pharmaceuticals.

The company gave its employees in Sri Lanka a paid holiday to enable them to donate a day’s labour towards this project under GSK’s ‘Orange Day’ programme, a global initiative to encourage engagement with local communities.

More than 100 personnel of GSK Pharmaceuticals led by the company’s senior management took on new roles as they mowed the playground, painted desks and chairs, fitted new doors and fluorescent lights, cleared accumulated rubble and unblocked drains at the school, which accommodates more than 650 students.

The school’s Principal Sarath Dheerasekera said this was the first time that representatives of an international company had visited the school and undertaken a project of this nature. “The efforts of GSK will encourage our students to take greater pride in their school and in their academic activities,” he said. “We are most grateful to the company for selecting our school for this project.”

Dheerasekera said the school had developed from very modest beginnings to produce eight students who qualified for university entrance last year, and had been placed fifth at the National Productivity Awards.

GSK Pharmaceuticals Managing Director Stuart Chapman said: “The Orange Day initiative provides employees of GSK an opportunity to personally contribute to the company’s corporate mission of improving the quality of human life by helping people to do more, feel better and live longer.”

“While our principal focus is to achieve this mission through the medicines and vaccines we produce, there is much we can do by supporting worthy causes in the communities we serve,” he said.

‘Orange Day’ is a term coined to be in harmony with GSK’s corporate colour and is about making a difference in countries where GSK is present. It also contributes to team building among employees and facilitates interaction with the community.

GSK and its predecessors have been doing business in Sri Lanka since the late 1930s. Among the company’s recent community contributions in Sri Lanka was a three-year, Rs 39 million project to empower more than 700 people with disabilities in the south of the country to lead more productive lives. The company also funded a project last year to build 149 transitional shelters in the Polonnaruwa District for families that lost their homes in floods.

A world leading pharmaceuticals and vaccines company, GSK is the only pharmaceuticals company to tackle the three priority diseases identified by the World Health Organization (WHO): HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.