Dear N K Sagar,

Vol. 8 Week 23 | 6 June 2012

HIGHLIGHT

50+ Competent Speakers Will be Presenting at CSR Asia Summit 2012

Accor, CLP, Coca-Cola, DHL, GIZ, LRQA, Nokia, Standard Chartered Bank, State Street Corporation, Tencent, Total, UNICEF, World Food Programme and more are confirmed to speak at the CSR Asia Summit 2012. Don't miss this must-attend gathering of over 500 CSR peers and learn from real-life CSR examples in Asia. View the full programme online and register now!

CSR Asia is recruiting Membership Coordinator / Project manager / Senior project manager

If you have relevant experience, and are keen to apply your knowledge of sustainable development issues and CSR, please find a detailed job descriptions here.

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ARTICLES

Land rights and forest peoples Reports of ‘land grabs’ and people being forced off their property in countries where the rule of law is unclear or unenforced are not new. In many cases we have seen people forcible evicted from land that they and their families have inhabited for centuries because land rights are ill-defined. More positively, a new report, published last week by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) shows that hundreds of millions of forest peoples in tropical nations have, in the last 20 years, actually gained unprecedented legal rights to their land. But, the research also finds that more than one-third of the rules governing land rights in most of the forests significantly limit a community's ability to exercise those rights. ... Read more

How Voluntary Service Overseas is working to scale up employee volunteering in Asia “We are a very traditional German company; to sell employee volunteering internally I need to be able to show the benefits” says the young CSR manager of a multinational company in Beijing to myself and Simon Brown, General Manager for Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in China. Simon has heard this before. “We can show how employee volunteering increases staff retention rates, connects companies to the communities in which they operate, and if done correctly, has real developmental impact.” Last month I learnt how VSO is altering its traditional model for bringing skilled international volunteers to Asia, and instead using the growing capacity of local professionals to contribute their skills to development projects in their own countries and overseas. ...                                                        Read more

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Upcoming Module of Masters Degree on CSR

Interested to learn more about strategic opportunities for your company or sector to make a difference in achieving development goals? Exploring opportunities to invest in social enterprise development? Join us for the next module of the Professional Master’s in CSR, which can also be taken as a ‘stand-alone’ course and will be delivered in Bangkok from 15-18 June 2012. This module will examine the contributions that businesses can make to sustainable development with particular emphasis on poverty alleviation. We examine innovative business practices associated with social enterprise, micro-finance, inclusive growth and the role business can play in community led approaches to poverty reduction . Participants will gain a better understanding of the potential of the private sector to engage in development and poverty alleviation and learn about a variety of business tools for pro-poor development. Interested applicants can visit www.csrcenter.ait.asia or email csrcenter@ait.asia for further details.