Date: 23 June, 2015
Venue: Victoria Crown Plaza Hotel is on the Island
Ajose Adeogun, Victoria Island Lagos.
Time: 10:00am
Nigeria leading newspaper publishing firm, BusinessDay is organising its Annual Giving Back Conference2015 with its Theme: Poverty Reduction and Youth Empowerment: Any Role for Corporate Social Investment?
Over the past decade, Nigeria has recorded one of the fastest growth rates in the world; yet the twin challenges of poverty and youth unemployment continue to plague the nation, with 63% of Nigerians living below $1 a day and over 50% of the youths being unemployed.
The negative and dangerous effects of this on the business and the economy as a whole cannot be over–emphasised. Some of which are vandalisation and wanton destruction of critical national infrastructure, armed robbery, kidnapping, etc.
The persistence of these challenges suggests the limited capacity of public policy to offer sustainable solutions. Therefore, in a truly private sector driven economy such as ours, the business community must rise up to the task of delivering innovative and sustainable solutions or models to tackle social problems facing the country.
BusinessDay is not new on the CSR front. On March 24, 2009, at Protea Hotel, Ikeja GRA, Lagos, BusinessDay, West Africa’s leading business and financial daily organised the first CSR roundtable that helped stop the National Assembly from continuing with the passage of the CSR Bill which hitherto would have legislated CSR in Nigeria.
Following the success of the maiden edition of the CSR Workshop, on March 31, 2011 at Eko Victoria Crown Plaza Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria, BusinessDay organised the 2nd edition of its Giving Back Conference with the theme: ‘Investing in Our Community for Sustainable Development’. The last Annual Giving Back Conference 2014 was held at The Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos and the theme was: ‘Giving Back- Making it Work.’
This year’s edition of the Annual Giving Back will be focused on CSR initiatives to meeting one of the MDG’s goals of empowering the youth and improving employment and the theme is “POVERTY REDUCTION AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT: Any Role for Corporate Social Investment?”
Conference Objectives
- To discuss the roles of Corporate Social Investing in Poverty Reduction. The conference is designed to showcase innovative CSR models and solutions aimed at solving some of Nigeria’s social problems – especially poverty and youth unemployment.
- The conference will also seize the occasion of this final year of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to celebrate CSR activities targeted at any of the eight MDGs.
- To engage the private sector to drive sustainable action towards poverty reduction and youth empowerment.
- To understand the approach of government at the three levels towards youth empowerment and poverty reduction.
Key Stakeholders
The conference will also focus on four categories in the giving back value chain- organisations involved in corporate investment, managers or custodians of the projects (Foundations, NGOs), beneficiaries of the projects (the communities, people) and those organisations intending to start their giving back initiatives, but do not know how to begin with a view to helping corporate organisations understand the sensibilities and needs of their host communities.
Why this Conference?
The conference aims to rally corporate organisations, foundations, NGOs and well spirited individuals to discuss how our concerted efforts could help solve the age long problem of poverty and youth unemployment. Organisations involved in corporate social investment will be offered the opportunity to tell their story and share their experiences. This is intended to inspire and spur into action all other organisations that are yet to embrace CSI as a business model. There will be a showcase of CSR / CSI projects of participating organisations.
What to expect?
- Quality Insights and discourse
- Quality debate and interaction between participants and speakers
- Sharing of Experience – Participants will learn from case studies and this will lead to improved knowledge and understanding.
- Networking opportunity
- Everyone will leave the conference with new ideas and empowered to make things happen instead of watching things happen.
Who Should Attend?
MD/CEOs, Senior Executives with CSI / CSR responsibility, Directors/Heads of Foundations, Senior executives in oil and gas and State Governments with responsibility in Community Development/ Relations or sustainable development Directors and Executive Directors in NGOs; corporate individuals who are aspiring to upgrade their CSI knowledge.
Source: BusinessDay
