Adfactors PR and the Future Communicators Foundation (FCF) have awarded the 2025 Adfactors PR FCF Scholarship at the School of Communications & Reputation (SCoRe) to Chaarutha Arabind and Shrimoyee Sur. The scholarship, fully funded by Adfactors PR, is presented annually to two top students from the Adfactors PR FCF Scholarship competition. This year, the top five applicants presented their campaign briefs in person at the Adfactors PR Mumbai office, with winners selected based on their 20-minute presentations.
The theme for the 2025 scholarship was “Mumbai Reimagined: Dreams in Sustainable Motion.” Students were required to create campaign briefs addressing Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) challenges in Mumbai, focusing on sustainability, inclusiveness, and climate resilience. They were tasked with selecting a focus area such as heritage preservation, affordable housing, or infrastructure, defining three Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for communication outcomes, and planning stakeholder engagement involving citizens, artists, and civil-society groups.
Shrimoyee Sur’s campaign, titled Shards from the Crown: Mumbai’s Vanishing Heritage, proposed a multi-pronged approach to heritage preservation. Initiatives included highlighting risks to architecture from flooding, waste, gentrification, and large-scale construction. The campaign featured a 30-minute documentary on Mumbai’s vanishing heritage, advocacy for composting and waste segregation to reduce flood damage, mapping waterlogged areas to promote public-private infrastructure partnerships, and encouraging electric buses to minimize the impact of large transport projects on heritage sites.
Chaarutha Arabind’s campaign, City of Dreams, City of Change, focused on citizen-led ESG initiatives. Projects included converting neglected city walls near heritage sites into carbon-capturing murals with QR codes to share sustainability and heritage stories, a gamified website encouraging green actions, partnerships with NGOs to integrate ESG into community events, and a ticketed comedy event to raise funds for green initiatives while promoting heritage preservation.
The scholarship highlights the growing integration of sustainability and ESG principles into communications education and professional practice. Both campaigns demonstrate how students can combine creativity, technology, and community engagement to address urban challenges while promoting heritage and sustainability in Mumbai.
The Adfactors PR FCF Scholarship continues to support the development of the next generation of communication leaders by providing a platform to apply classroom learning to real-world, sustainability-focused campaigns.
