31 January 2018

Sharing resources to advance responsible business conduct and sustainability reporting

Over the past eighteen months, we have regularly reported on our ongoing work to advance responsible business conduct and sustainability reporting, particularly within the SME community of our member federations.

You may recall that well-attended workshops took place in Jakarta and Johannesburg in 2016, hosted by APINDO and BUSA respectively; and in Arusha and Kumasi, hosted by ATE and GEA, in 2017. We have announced that further workshops will take place next month in Dhaka, hosted by BEF; in Lima, hosted by CONFIEP; and in Bogotá, hosted by ANDI.  Phnom Penh will be the location of our final workshop of the year with CAMFEBA.

In designing and delivering these workshops with us, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Centro Vincular complemented material provided by the IOE secretariat and our members. The outcome is a wealth of resources aimed at further advancing the goals outlined above, which themselves support the achievement of the SDGs.

Of particular note are the joint IOE-GRI publication, Small Business, Big Impact and the three-part course for SMEs entitled Communicating on sustainability issues, which are now available in English, French and Spanish. We would like to express our gratitude to the European Union for financially supporting the translation of the course.

Please access these items via the links in the side panel; distribute them to your members; upload them to your websites and include them in your newsletters. Please contact us with your feedback and comments via the links in the side panel!