KARACHI – PepsiCo organized an event titled ‘With Purpose’ at the Pearl Continental Hotel Lahore. The event showcased PepsiCo’s sustainability efforts in four key areas; next generation agriculture practices, access to safe water, women empowerment and youth employment. The evening also served as a platform for 4 brilliant young speakers to share their vision of purpose and social impact.
Najeeha Farooq, Co- Founder Roshni Rides, spoke about her journey of setting up a professional, comfortable and reliable transport solution for women and children. Rizq a social enterprise committed to ending huger in Pakistan was represented by one of it’s co-founders Musa Aamir, Musa spoke candidly about the challenges and triumphs that come with running a non-profit. Faiza Saleem, one of the first female standup comedians in Pakistan added some insightful humor to the mix about breakings myths in a male dominated genre. The fourth speaker was Annum Tariq, a graduate of the PepsiCo – Amal leadership program. Her talk was about the struggles fresh graduates go through in finding a job and how the youth program helped her in gaining an edge with prospective employers.
The event focused on the four pillars of PepsiCo’s ‘Winning with Purpose’ Agenda in Pakistan. Installations demonstrating PepsiCo’s impact in each area were appreciated by the attendees. In water, PepsiCo has partnered with Water Aid to provide access to safe water to 150,000 people in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. The first rehabilitated filtration plant under this initiative was inaugurated in Lahore last month. This intervention feeds in to PepsiCo’s global goal of providing access to safe water to 25 million people by 2025.
PepsiCo is leading the Next Generation Agriculture Practices in Pakistan by helping its farmers adopt high efficiency irrigation systems, educating them on alternatives to stubble burning, encouraging peer to peer learning and water conservation. Since 2017, PepsiCo has helped its farmers reduce water consumption by 2.6 billion liters.
PepsiCo is commitment to Women Empowerment. Women make up 20 percent of the company’s frontline workforce. The company has onsite day care facilities, offers mentor ship programs for women and offers opportunities for location fee roles and career growth across different functions.
PepsiCo in partnership with Amal Academy is running a program that develops the professional skills of university graduates to enhance their opportunities for gaining meaningful employment. . So far, one 1000 young men and women have graduated from the program On the occasion, CEO PepsiCo Pakistan and Afghanistan Furqan Ahmed Syed announced PepsiCo’s commitment to enroll another 2000 university graduates into the program and expand the program into Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
On the occasion, Furqan Ahmed Syed, CEO for PepsiCo Pakistan and Afghanistan shared PepsiCo’s agenda of Winning with Purpose and acknowledged colleagues and partners and individuals outside of the organization who have championed and advocated the ‘With Purpose’ Agenda.
