UNDP's Asia Pacific Regional Centre organized a three-day learning event that challenged traditional notions of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility.
Companies discussed building business based on approaches pioneered by civil society, while civil society participants expressed the need to improve their own "business DNA" in order to scale up their own collaboration with the private sector.
22 November 2012: The Asia Pacific Regional Centre of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) hosted a three-day International Learning Workshop in Bangkok, Thailand, for public, private and civil society representatives to develop opportunities for public-private partnerships (PPPs) and “create shared value towards sustainable development.”
UNDP’s Asia-Pacific Knowledge, Innovation and Capacity Team organized the event as part of UNDP’s Capacity Development Learning Week, in partnership with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), WASTE advisors on urban environment and development, and CSR-Asia. Participants included: company representatives of UNILEVER, the palm oil industry, Standard Chartered Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers; government representatives from Bhutan’s municipality of Thimphu, India’s Unique Identification Authority, and Nepal’s Ministry of Environment; and staff of international development agencies CARE, VSO, The Australian Foundation for Development Cooperation, and others.
Speakers from the private sector and civil society presented examples of technological innovations that are creating social good, among them an online system for logging instances of Indian citizens being forced to pay bribes, waste management based on an “inclusive business approach” that shares benefits with local people in Bangladesh, and a bank that sees its contribution to an eye health programme as bringing workers back to the labor market.
A UNDP press release highlighted that the event challenged traditional notions of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility, as companies built business based on approaches pioneered by civil society, while civil society participants expressed the need to improve their own “business DNA” in order to scale up their own collaboration with the private sector.
In a concept note, UNDP described the event as a response to the call from the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20) to build capacity and PPPs as crucial “means of implementation” of sustainable development. [International Learning Workshop Agenda] [UNDP Capacity Development Learning Week website] [UNDP Press Release]