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This was on display after nearly a dozen women underwent a four-month 2012 driving course—featuring dual control vehicles and basic mechanical lessons— with strong community support. A core group between ages 18 and 35 has since joined the Bunder Project (mirroring a more troubled campaign to promote women taxi drivers in Indian cities.) However, the process was not without serious risks, according to Lisa Dean, principal advisor in the Communities and Social Performance Team. "Women lead- ing change can often be significantly chal- lenged in relation to their own place in the community," she said in a 2013 report by UN Global Compact Network Australia, part of a worldwide strategy promoting business sustainability. Moreover, as women become "change agents . . . this can come at a tremendous individual cost—and we have to be pre- pared to give them the support they need in these situations," Dean added. The driving program, for instance, suc- ceeds through talks balancing concerns and interests of family members, local Indian operational staff and a women's NGO. "We overcame this by talking to these groups," Santosh added. "It helped they could see we were a big, stable organization." In a similar vein, meanwhile, more than a dozen women from outside the area have joined the project's security detail. Security managers located a police training acade- my in Punjab state, which recruited and trained the women for these roles. The Bunder initiatives, enhanced by a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with children's aid organization UNICEF from 2008, constitute what Rio terms a "virtu- ous circle" of inclusivity—and productivity. "It has raised both men's and the women's performance," said Rio Tinto Group Advisor for Diversity and Inclusion Nadia Younes. "Men and women mining together makes for better mining—and case studies coming from our operations support this." Across global mining sector CSR pro- grams, the systematic, data-driven nature behind most mining operations still often trumps social awareness needs, Dean acknowledged. "We are a subset within a large subculture of miners and engineers and people who think in a linear way and want a metric for these things," she said. People are "prepared to accept complicated metallurgy—but it takes time to get internal acceptance that working with communities may be as complicated," Dean added. The very nature and dimensions of the Bunder project underscores this. Five years after a 2004 discovery of a cluster of vol- canic rock, studies have revealed a 53.7- million-metric ton (mt) Kimberlite deposit containing an estimated 34.2 million carats in diamond content. A mine plan was accepted by government officials in Q3 and a fully modular $7 million sample processing plant has since been installed, while Rio is investing $500 million for asset development; Madhya Pradesh will become one of the world's top-10 diamond producing regions. It's a massive undertaking, of course. But companies like Rio Tinto, the world's second-largest mining company, are increasingly leveraging their abilities— accessing resources below ground while making a lasting difference above it. MARCH 2014 • E&MJ; 67 www.e-mj.com C S R W AT C H EMJ_pg65-67_EMJ_pg65-67 3/3/14 9:36 AM Page 67