Business Networks for Corporate Responsibility

EMPRESA   Peru 2021   SVNE   UN Summit

Global Academy chair, Walter Link, is an international businessman and social entrepreneur.  He and many of his friends and partners are pioneers in the international movement for Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility (CSR). Since its inception, the CSR movement has worked to develop the tools and examples for orienting companies and economies towards social and environmental sustainability.  Over the last decade, CSR has gained prominence, but broad based implementation is still lacking.

CSR is now a key topic for many in most sectors of society, including consumers, governments, and corporate leaders.  One of the tools that has projected CSR from the fringes of public and corporate attention to the mainstream is the creation of CSR-oriented business networks where the already committed and newly interested can be inspired, informed, and supported to redesign strategy and implement practical steps of change.  In turn, these networks have played an important role in raising the visibility of CSR and winning acceptance as a mass phenomenon which is supported by small and large corporations in Europe, North America, and increasingly throughout the world.

The Global Academy and its chair are active in the work of the CSR networks listed below.  Similar to the Global Academy's work, these CSR networks combine the development of and education about pragmatic models for change that can be be implemented into the mainstream of corporations and economies.

EMPRESA
EMPres y REsponsabilidad Social en las Américas
Enterprise and Social Responsibility in the Americas
EMPRESA is the leading alliance of business networks for corporate responsibility in the Americas.  EMPRESA's mission is to help establish new and strengthen existing business networks for corporate responsibility throughout the Americas.  Present member organizations include:
Brazil:  Instituto Ethos
Chile:  Accion Empresarial
El Salvador:  Fundemas
Peru:  Peru 2021
USA:  Business for Social Responsibility
Worldwide:  Prince of Wales Business Leaders Network

Additional organizations are being created in:
Panama:  Business for Social Responsibility Panama, soon to become COMPASS
Mexico:  Alianza para la Responsibilidad Social EMPRESArial (AliaRSE)

EMPRESA works with the many interested corporate and societal leaders throughout the region to support the emergence of similar networks. 

The Global Academy is a founding sponsor of EMPRESA and continues to support its ongoing work. Global Academy chair Walter Link helped create the 1997 founding conference in Miami. GA provided the seed funding to fire the first EMPRESA manager, allowing the newly created organization to proceed towards financial sustainability. Mr. Link has been a member of EMPRESA's governing council since the organization's formation, and is now helping to establish a Board of Advisors.

For more information on EMPRESA and its member organizations visit the website at www.empresa.org
(top)

Peru 2021
First conceived in 1992 and founded in 1994, Peru 2021 works to promote corporate social responsibility throughout Peru and to create and then adopt a national vision for Peru by 2021.

Peru 2021initiatives include research and implementation of the means to promote corporate social responsibility. For example, the organization identified that the current legal and institutional framework limits private social investment and they are moving to change this.  Their activities include:
an Annual Conference of Corporate Social Responsibility as their primary means of disseminating information on CSR
Education Innovation Project in the district of Independcia which works to improve education in the public sector and will provide a model for expansion throughout the Peruvian education system
National Network to Improve Girl's Education with the aim that all girls in Peru will complete a high school education

Global Academy chair Walter Link serves on Peru 2021's international board of advisors. Mr. Link recently gave the keynote presentation at the network's annual conference on the subject of Natural Capitalism. The televised speech was shown repeatedly on Peruvian television, demonstrating the high level of interest for corporate social and environmental responsibility in Peru as it looks for new paths into a successful and sustainable future.

For more information on Peru 2021 visit the website at www.peru2021.org
(top)

Social Venture Network Europe (SVNE)
Founded in 1993, SVNE is a network of European business leaders, companies, and social entrepreneurs with the goal "to change the way the world does business."

Its sister organization, the Social Venture Network (SVN), founded in 1987, was one of the pioneer organizations of Corporate Social Responsibility in the US and worldwide.  Out of SVN other major organizations were born, including Business for Social Responsibility, now a key member of EMPRESA and the largest US CSR entity, and the Investors Circle.  Walter Link, GA chairman, is active in all these organizations.

For the first few years of its existence, SVNE was one of the leading CSR organizations in Europe and it played an important role in the acceptance by European society of the promotion of social and environmental responsibility by the corporate world rather than government and civil society.

Global Academy chair Walter Link was both a founding member and Chairman of the Board of SVNE during this time.  On behalf of SVNE, Mr. Link organized numerous gatherings of business leaders, including a large international conference held in 1996 at Prague Castle under the patronage of President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic.  President Havel had led the "velvet revolution" that transformed the socialist state into a democratic market system, and like many leaders in Eastern Europe, he sought models that would transform the humanitarian values that had driven the "velvet revolution" into concrete economic realties for the new state.  To address this need, Mr. Link assembled leading representatives of business, civil society, and government from around the world. This initiative was at the heart of SVNE's work and multi-stakeholder dialogues in the context of a business organization also addressed an increasingly apparent need to broaden governance to include all three key sectors of society, i.e. government, business, and civil society.

During his tenure as SVNE chair, Walter Link also oversaw the organization's contribution to the SVN Standards Project which helped companies in Europe and the US develop indicators for defining and measuring "corporate responsibility," a vague and often misused term. 
(top)

Institute for Social and Ethical AccountAbility 
Together with British Telecom, Ben & Jerry’s, and the Body Shop, Walter Link was one of the four founding members of the Institute for Social and Ethical AccountAbility that supported companies in the development and integration of accounting methods that measure their social impact in a practical way.

UN Global "Habitat" Summit 
In 1996, SVNE was invited to "Habitat," the UN Global "Habitat" Summit in Istanbul. This summit concluded a series of conferences held in Beijing and Rio de Janeiro, among other cities. As Chairman of the Social Venture Network, Walter Link, together with five other business leaders, gave a 3-hour briefing for the official delegates of the Summit on the subject of CSR, surprising many government leaders with the possibility that social and environmental sustainability and economic interest can be aligned. Other briefings included one for the Summit's Secretary General and one for the entire US delegation.  These briefings led to inclusion into the UN's Global Plan of Action of a segment asking for the development and implementation of standards for SCR. Mr. Link also convened various workshops as part of the Summit's NGO Forum on related issues.

European SCR Think Tank
Walter Link was also a member of a think tank created by the Danish government and the European Union that was charged with developing CSR theory and educational strategies to bring about mainstream implementation into companies and economies around Europe.
(top)