Corporate social responsibility
At Insync we believe that you don't have to leave your morality at the door before you start work each day, which is why we choose to make significant contributions to society and the environment.
Commitment to the communities in which Insync operates
As a business, we benefit from the stability of our communities. All the work we do can be regarded as a positive side effect of being fortunate enough to operate somewhere that is stable and safe. Accordingly, our staff and our board agree that there is a moral imperative that demands we return something to the community.
We are involved in many types of projects:
- disaster relief
- community building
- issues based support and fostering entrepreneurship/capacity building.
Disaster relief involves giving money quickly when it is most required. Our staff builds up a kitty with weekly donations and use it when there is a groundswell of opinion that something needs to be done. We have given thousands of dollars over the years to communities in need.
Community building
In April 2007 a tsunami hit the palm fringed tropical islands around Vona Vona lagoon in the Western Province of Solomon Islands including Kolombangara, Ghizo, Ranongga, Vella, Simbo and more.
 |
One of those villages where a friend of our firm, Pebby Sovutu (pictured left) lived. Pebby had a wild youth, living and studying agriculture in colonial PNG, growing a big afro, wearing gargantuan flares and playing in a rock and roll band. He returned home, taught in secondary schools, toned down the afro, rediscovered his Seventh Day Adventist roots, and used his one salary to take care of an entire extended family of twenty dependents. He also tighes, giving 10% of all his income, from his salary to every tenth sweet potato in his fields to charity. |
Though Pebby is a man of the Nggatokae island, the society is matriarchal, meaning that land is owned by women, and that men go and live in the village their wife came from. Pebby retired and went to live in his wife's village, hoping to spread knowledge about good farming practices that enrich, retain and nurture the soils; replacing the slash and burn methods that worked with a small population but would leave the island denuded of trees as the population grew.
Taking his life savings, Pebby built a new house and established a school in his village. Then the tsunami hit. Pebby's village was wiped out. Ten months later he was still too proud to ask for help, even though the village's boats had been washed away and they were living in a makeshift shelter made of leaves in the bush. Malnutrition and malaria were rife, and the children were not going to school.
Moreover, the disaster was "too small" for aid agencies to get involved in. It was just one more insignificant tragedy in a world of sorrow.
Insync Surveys reached out to Pebby, finding out that he needed to buy concrete stumps for termite proof housing and a water tank to avoid water borne diseases.
Here are some of the things Insync Surveys helped Pebby provide for his family:
Concrete stumps
| Chairs | Materials to build a chicken coop |
 |
 |
Read Pebby's
letter with an update of his situation
Issues based support
Over the years Insync Surveys has become passionate about particular issues and contributed to them with money, work and personal sacrifice.
Fostering entrepreneurship
Insync Surveys donates to micro finance NGOs in 26 countries. To date, we have helped 84 businesses get off the ground with loans to buy income generating assets such as land, livestock, goods for retail businesses, etc.
For example, we loaned money to Kadiatu Bah (pictured below) in Sierra Leone. Kadiatu sells baby clothes, bags, flasks, and rubber bowls at the market. She required a loan to buy more baby clothes to expand her business and increase profits. This gives her the opportunity to better support her family. The loan was repaid over 10 months.
Commitment to health
Every year Insync Surveys sends Christmas cards to clients purchased from a charity greeting card organisation. Part of the proceeds from the purchase supports the The Cancer Council.
Prostate cancer has affected people we know. To develop awareness we developed a Prostate Cancer Awareness Quiz to help you learn more about the illness. Take the test to see how much you know about prostate cancer.
Commitment to the environment
As a white collar services firm, Insync Surveys' environmental impact is not as significant as others. Nevertheless, we are committed to doing the right thing by the natural environment in any way that we can.
Examples of actions we take to increase environmental sustainability:
- Offsetting the carbon from our air travel wherever possible
- Using our computers on energy saving settings
- Office plants
- Turning lights off
- Recycling paper
- Recycling toner cartridges
- Recycling bottles, cans, etc
- Recycling computer equipment
EMAS and ISO 14000 are the two best accepted environmental standards in common usage. We use the principles enshrined in EMAS (which is stronger than the ISO) to guide our approach to managing the impacts of our actions.
