US-based CSR membership organization Business for Social Responsibility
(BSR) has formed a partnership with the Asian think tank Global
Institute For Tomorrow (Gift) aimed at setting up a programme to
encourage corporate community involvement in the region.
The Young Leaders Programme will be billed as ‘a chance for young
executives to apply their skills in collaboration with civil society
and community organizations on projects that build social capital’.
It will be launched in July, with the first project set to take place in China’s Yunnan Province in July.
The partnership was signed in San Francisco by Chandran Nair, founder
and chief executive of Gift, and Aron Cramer, chief executive of BSR.
Cramer said the project would ‘work to influence a fundamental shift in
each participant’s understanding of business and its influence and
impacts outside the boardroom through life-changing field-projects’.
The idea has been backed by former US president Bill Clinton.
Gift is a pan-Asian, non-profit think tank that connects businesses,
policy makers and civil society ‘so they may find common ground
from which to meet the challenges of globalization’. BSR, which has
offices in the US, Europe and China, is a non-profit business
association that serves about 250 member companies and other Global
1000 enterprises.
