Emirates Foundation's Social Investment Business Breakfast series discusses the global sustainability agenda

Taking place on the back of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which famously saw the newly inaugurated US President Barack Obama speak in Cairo in 2009 about the importance of SMEs in the region, the session discussed the global agenda of sustainability and ways to improve the social impact of CSR and corporate social investment programs.

Speakers comprised two global sustainability experts, Dr. Alexandra Stubbings, consultant at Ashridge Business School in the UK, a leader in advising corporates on their sustainability agenda and Dr. Munira Jamjoom, Senior Specialized Researcher at Booz & Company and expert on CSR in the region. Clare Woodcraft, Emirates Foundation's CEO, moderated the event and also introduced the session.

Woodcraft shared with the audience the transformative journey that Emirates Foundation has undergone in 2012 transitioning from a traditional grant making organization into a more long-term venture philanthropy entity focused on youth development. She noted how the global sustainability agenda had influenced the Foundation's own transformation whereby it now focuses on a single issue - youth development - takes a much longer timeframe for its programs and has developed a robust in-house monitoring and evaluation capability. This she noted would allow the Foundation to deliver much more measureable and sustainable outcomes for young people. This also tied in directly with the discourse of the GES event which was debating how SMEs can drive economic growth and notably create jobs for young people.

Woodcraft earlier moderated a session on youth which focused on the challenge of creating millions of new jobs for the growing youth population in the MENA region where discussants spoke of the need to reform education, liberalize economies to encourage FDI and growth and incentivize the private sector through an enabling environment. Both the GES debate and that of the Business Breakfast unite members of the private and public sectors to talk about how to tackle some of the region's socio-economic challenges.

Fellow panelist Dr. Alexandra Stubbings noted that: "Increasing numbers of organisations are now stating that they are "embedding sustainability" into their business," citing the business school's most recent report on the subject entitled 'Sustainability As Usual'. However, Stubbings noted that it is still not clear "what this means for strategy, operations and culture? What does success look like? Sustainability is still an ill-defined and contested concept; and transformational change is hard."

Dr. Jamjoom, a prolific writer and researcher of regional socio-economic issues and trends equally noted the importance of long-term thinking commenting that, "The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is undergoing its most significant changes for decades. Middle Eastern countries therefore face the choice of either short-term retrenchment, or resolutely pursuing the long-term reforms needed for future economic success. There is a clear need to promote important economic adjustments that can support economic growth and encourage modernization in both the public and private sectors." She went on to point out that "the CSR movement in region is in a good position to be a driving force for sustainable development rather than a reactive movement."

Emirates Foundation launched its quarterly Business Breakfast for Social Investment in the first quarter of 2012 and plans to continue to host this increasingly popular quarterly forum to provide an opportunity for all sectors in the UAE to discuss prominent socio-economic issues and notably the challenges and opportunities facing young people.