Date of event: 9 May 2017

Location: University of Leicester.

Event description:

The proceedings began with a presentation of several short films produced by Project Everyone to help raise awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals. The films can be found here.

Making Global Goals Local Business – Leicester was then formally opened by the Dean of the University of Leicester School of Business, Professor Zoe Radnor. He passed the floor on to Steve Kenzie, Executive Director, UN Global Compact Network UK who presented some information about the SDGs Roadshow and why it had been undertaken. He also introduced attendees to the UN Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative.

After the welcome session, Steve Kenzie began the main event with a presentation on What are the SDGs? He gave a brief account of how the Goals came into being and an overview of the Goals. He then did a deep dive into some of the Goals to demonstrate their scope and richness. Steve Kenzie’s slides are available here.

Steve was followed by Uwe Lübbermann, Founder and Main Moderator of Premium Cola who gave the keynote speech. Uwe talked about Premium Cola, a soft drink brand founded in Germany with a unique structure (no office, no salaries, and no actual boss) and business model. The company operates through an ‘open-source economy model’, the Premium-OS (= Betriebssystem), which is based on fairness, ecology, sustainability and self-motivation. To learn more about Premium Cola click here.

During a short break, participants were invited to take part in a ‘Dot Voting’ exercise on the SDGs. By using black and white stickers, they were asked to indicate which of the SDGs represented business opportunities for their city today and which instead would be opportunities in five years. The results of the exercise are shown in the figure below (Click image to view full size).

SDGs Dot Voting – Leicester

The event continued with a panel discussion on How can business get involved? moderated by Professor Martin Parker. The panellists were:

  • Vimme Rathur, Business in the Community – Business in the Community (BITC) is a business-led charity that provides businesses with solutions to tackle some of the main challenges faced by our society. The organization focuses on five key issues: Environment, Employees, Education, Employment and Enterprise. For more information click here.
  • Professor Paul Cullis, Equality and Diversity Committee, University of Leicester – The Equality and Diversity Committee was established at the University of Leicester to oversee and provide advice on matters related to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. The objectives of the committee include: formulating adequate policies, monitoring implementation of policies and activities and establishing working groups to implement work on specific aspects of these issues. More information about the Equality and Diversity Committee are available here.

Following the panel discussion participants were invited to join one of the two parallel break-out sessions on SDGs and businesses:

  1. Problem solving workshop moderated by Uwe Lübbermann
  2. Discussion with University of Leicester sustainability experts moderated by Dr Nibedita Ray-Bennett, Lecturer in Risk Management at University of Leicester.

Making Global Goals Local Business – Leicester ended with some closing remarks from Steve Kenzie and a networking reception.

Further resources:

For further information please contact the UK Network Secretariat: secretariat@unglobalcompact.org.uk

This SDG Roadshow event was supported by: