CEMStainability
2013
Table of Contents
Message from the CEMS Student Board CSR Team……………
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Racing in Belgium……………………......…………………………………….
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UNAOC experience in New York…………………..…………………….
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Business Project with CARE in Germany…………………….……….
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Girl goes bald in Holland…………………….……………………………….
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Volunteer day in Hungary……………………….………………….………
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CEMS 20th Anniversary in Norway…………………………….………..
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Charity Raffle at CEMS Gala Casino Night in CZ……………………
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Balancing harmful emissions in Ireland……………………………….
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The SteakHolders Charity Concert in Spain………….……………..
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Rotterdam Cares SO DO WE……………………..………………….…….
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Donating blood in Austria…………………………...……………………..
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Humanitarian Week in Russia…………….………………….……………
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CSR activities in Poland…………………………….………………….……..
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Message from the CSR Team
“Those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world usually do� Steve Jobs
Dear reader, On behalf of the CEMS Student Board, the CSR Team is glad to present you the second edition of the CSR Booklet. This booklet is a compilation of recent CSR practices and activities of the CEMS community. We hope that these success stories will inspire you to organise more activities and show that we CEMSies can make a difference. We will be glad to hear more from you about your engagement with CSR and Sustainable development in keeping with the CEMS spirit! Get inspired, create your own events, share your practices with us and we will spread the word about your achievements! Best wishes,
Your CEMS Student Board CSR Team Sangram, Ekaterina, Cristina and Sarianne CEMS-Social-Responsibility-Team@cemsmail.org Please, think about the environment before printing
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Racing in Belgium The 24-hour bike ride of Louvain-laNeuve is a famous Belgian festival held at our university every year during October. Apart from being a big event for partying, it is foremost a race where different teams with different purposes compete. This year, CEMS Club Belgium decided to take part in the humanitarian racing competition. In this specific category, there were 17 teams present this year willing to raise as much money as they can for their cause. Indeed, an amount of money is put into play and the teams try to get the biggest part of the pie. The more laps you do compared
to the others, the bigger the amount of money raised. Building on the work of the previous years, we decided to continue supporting the microcredit organization Babyloan.org, the first French website facilitating online micro-lending. On Babyloan.org, Internet users (such as you and me) can decide to lend the amount of money they want to microentrepreneurs of their choice. These micro-entrepreneurs, native of developing countries, are largely disadvantaged because they experience precarious conditions.
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They aspire to launch a small business in order to improve the living conditions of their families. By lending, and not donating money, Babyloan.org does not promote ‘mere’ charity acts but bets on the abilities of each individual to make a living, and at the same time contribute to the local community. This event was the opportunity for CEMS Club Belgium to strengthen the CEMS community studying at LSM while supporting a CSR activity important to us. It was not always easy: this activity is very demanding in terms of time, organization and physical endurance. We had to make sure that during the entire 24 hours of race we always had a sufficient number of people being ready to relay the person racing. We also struggled with flat tires. But at the end of the day, we all had so much fun participating in this event. It will be remembered as one of the best moments of the first semester. Finally, we succeeded in being on the twelfth position in front of experienced teams: we did 70 laps of around 13 minutes each. This translates into around 500 euros collected for a Babyloan project.
MichaĂŤl Richard michael.richard@cemsmail.org
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UNAOC experience in New York "Why on earth would you want to work for free?" Last summer I had a great plan - it was also a simple plan: I should finish my thesis. It is still a great and simple plan, but I am only getting around to following it now. Here is the distraction: our CEMS coordinator in the beginning of July sent out an email with the offer of an internship in the autumn at the United Nations in New York City. At first I was not very excited by the email: First of all, I had planned to spend the autumn writing my thesis, and second of all, the internship was unpaid, and as a good classmate said "Why on earth would you want to work for free?". A fair point, obviously, as there were several available internships that offered paid positions, and NYC is, after all, one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. However, at that point I still was not sure in which direction I should develop my career, and, I was still playing with the thought of working for either an IO or NGO, or somewhere where I would have the opportunity to address global challenges and help to raise the living standards in developing countries. So, based on this lack of clear direction in career-path, I decided to apply. Two weeks later I was standing outside the Chrysler building, where the UNAOC office is located. For those not familiar with the UN family - it is huge. The UN comprises 6 core bodies, and in addition has 14 specialized agencies and 12 funds and programmes, being managed by approximately 56,000 staff members.
UNAOC (United Nations Alliance of Civilizations), my new employer, was established back in 2005, as an initiative of the UN Secretary General, with the aims to improve understanding and cooperation between states and people of different cultures and religions. It tries to counter the forces that contribute to extremism and polarization by encouraging dialogue, understanding and respect among people from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, through various different projects and initiatives that are being run by the organization. The High Representative for the UNAOC is the former President of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio.
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The office itself is really small - all in all we were around 14 employees (some were frequently on missions), of which four were interns, all having different academic and national backgrounds. The official working hours were from 9AM5PM, however people used to arrive around 10AM and did not leave earlier than 7PM. During the day I was sitting in meetings, attending sessions or specific events at the HQs, or conducting research for the projects I was working on. When I arrived my supervisor was still on maternity leave, so there was a lot of work that had to be done for the Youth Program. The days were pretty busy, each of them offering a new learning point or something to think about. Furthermore, at the UN in NYC, there are around 400 international interns. This means that we had our own little international community, which offered lots of activities and networking events such as philosophical debates, language classes, mission visits, Backstreet Boys concert, kayaking on the Hudson River etc.
One of the great things about working in such a place is, that you never really know who you can meet or when. At some point I managed to walk into Aung San Suu Kyi on the staircase, and I had a talk with Jeffrey Sachs about snacks (of all things) and had a dinner with the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asking him questions about international relations, bombs, and, well, family. I worked at the UNAOC for four months from the end of July till the end of November. At the very end of my internship, I got offered a position as a Communication Officer for the project I was working on. The project focuses on social entrepreneurship and innovation, which is something that I am really passionate about, so, it was not an offer I
had to think twice about before accepting. A job offer, though, was not the last surprise NY would have for me. On the day of my departure, Sandy hit NY and my flight got cancelled, and I ended up spending a week trapped on Manhattan. Even though I did wonder whether the world would end with her arrival, it did not, and the worst thing that happened was that our flat was transformed into a little Evacuation Center where people came to cook and get a shower. Which wasn't really that bad either This whole experience provided me with opportunities that I would never have expected possible, and even gave me a push in the right direction of where to go in my future career. From being a slightly disoriented student not even knowing what to write my thesis about, I ended up leaving with an incredible experience, a job, and, in fact, a half written thesis, as during my internship I had a talk with a colleague at the UN, who gave me a great idea for the direction of it. So, looking back now - working for free was definitely worth it.
Roxane Jurovskaia
rozane.jurovskaia@cemsmail.org
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Business Project with CARE in Germany Just a year after CEMS widened the circle of its partners with two Social Partners, FairTrade and CARE International, the University of Cologne was already offering Business Projects in coordination with the local offices of both these organizations. As an exchange student in Cologne, I had the opportunity to participate in the business project organized by CARE Deutschland-Luxembourg. Essentially the objective of our Business Project was to research the potential of the partnership between CARE and CEMS in Germany. We set about to do so by learning about the fundamental roles, objectives and motivations of both organizations and interviewing their most important stakeholders. For example, we have interviewed the Secretary General of both CARE International and CEMS, various CEMS Alumni, other Social Partners, representatives of CEMS and CARE Corporate Partners, and so on. Finally, we have also researched best-practice examples within the CEMS community as well as outside, for NGO-academic partnerships. We have also surveyed CEMS students about their attiude and preferences towards Social Partners. Based on the interviews and the best practice examples we could collect throughout our project, we had presented CARE DL with a list of more than 30 initiatives and tasks to enhance their cooperation with CEMS.
Our recommendations panned from giving guest lectures at CEMS courses to co-organizing skill seminars with consulting companies and organizing project-specific Business Projects, such as marketing campaigns or international logistics. We have learnt many valuable lessons not just from the freedom we had received to organize and conduct our own work, but also gained useful insights about the roles of NGOs in society today and their importance in solving social problems around the world through cooperating with business and academic institutions. We hope that our recommendations will be useful for all cooperation between CEMS and its Social Partners everywhere and thus give the opportunity to all CEMSies to widen their perspectives just as we have.
Anik贸 Kraft aniko.kraft@cemsmail.org
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Girl goes bald in Holland In 1994, her home country Rwanda was hit by a devastating war between 2 ethnic tribes; the Tutsis and the Hutus that resulted in over 800,000 deaths in the span of just 100 days. That’s a little over 20% of the country’s population. This war left thousands and thousands of children without mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters who could take care of them. These Children had been victimized on a scale not seen since the Holocaust; many saw their family members tortured and murdered. Half a million girls were raped. Tania had always felt lucky, grateful and blessed to have not lived through the war her family lived. And in 2006, she decided to demonstrate this gratefulness and spent 2 months working in an orphanage helping, as she could, the children and teenagers that were left with literally nothing after the war. Naive and young, she felt the system was working, that these children were going to survive the ruthless conditions of post-war life in Rwanda. But harsh reality kicked in as she returned in June 2012. These were the facts she faced: there were more children than aids available. Not even 1% of those in need could be accommodated in shelters. The aids were being lowered year by year due to geo-eco-political factors but also slowly the memory and eyes are turning away from what happened. Many orphans are removed from the orphanages as early as 15 years of age in favor of younger ones in need, but the problem is still the same. “How are they to survive!” thought Tania.
There needs to be more awareness on our western side! “I was surprised to find out that educated university students of my age, still had no idea of the story of Rwanda – one of the biggest genocide of our living time” Tania Habimana states. And so Tania decided to make a bold statement and go bald. The aim was not to raise money, but rather to raise awareness. So far, a little under $2000 has been raised using the 2 donation webpages, a lot of support from her fellow students and work colleagues, and a series of offline in-hand donation. She has plans to continue in fund- and awarenessbuilding activities throughout the year. The action also circulated the internet via a series of tweets and blog/magazine articles which have in turn, triggered a few youngsters to look into the issue and start creating some projects in and with Rwandan orphanages. We hope to see more to come.
Tania Habimana
tania.habimana@cemsmail.org
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Volunteer day in Hungary Corporate Social Responsibility projects are flourishing among all (kinds of) forand not for-profit organizations these days. CEMS Club Budapest is also committed to gradually establish a team focusing intensely on helping our beloved city’s worthy communities. Not only is it a future strategic goal of the organization, but it will also be a great opportunity to mingle and get to know the freshly accepted CEMSies. In this semester we went to the Mozgolóda kindergarten to repaint its outdoor facilities. Spending a day together to create a more colourful environment for the young ones along with it being one of the first shiny days of the spring, definitely got us closer together. The kindergarten is situated in Buda, in the eleventh district and provids daily activities for many children from the neighbourhood. With its wide courtyard there is plenty of jungle gyms and other facilities to play with (my personal favourite was the soon to be inaugurated little soccer/basketball field sized properly to its little users). However, many of them, despite having stood the test of time, needed renovation.
The enthusiastic team of 24 CEMSies and the employees began to work in the morning. After hours of painting (more so on us) chatting turned the court, from its rubbed outlook yellow, green, red to or simply a freshly painted shade of brown. Before we finished we received a wonderful and much appreciated meal from the (pre-school) teachers. After saying goodbye to the grateful employees of the lovely kindergarten, our day was not completely over as we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon together. We headed to the nearest park at Kopaszi gát to play Frisbee – and for some girls it was time to sunbathe – which was just the perfect ending to our day. We wish all the best for the future projects of Mozgolóda Óvoda and would like to say that we are also thankful for the chance to help! Special thanks to the organizer who made it happen: Sára Bihari, hopefully there will be similar events in the upcoming semesters as well!
Péter Oláh peter.olah@cemsmail.org
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CEMS 20th Anniversary in Norway On September 29th Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) celebrated the CEMS 20th Anniversary at NHH. This event brought together current NHH CEMS students, alumni and CEMS corporate social partner UNICEF. During the “CEMS and Social Partners” Skill Seminar held during the first part of the event UNICEF delivered a presentation on its main working principles and the ways it collaborates with various businesses to help children worldwide. The participants learnt how UNICEF chooses its partners, assesses the compatibility between UNICEF and companies’ strategies and tries to create extra value through innovating together with its partners. Later on, the audience was engaged in group discussions on how a company can benefit from strategic partnership with a non-commercial organization, how the perceived fit and image transfer can be managed. Discovered insights were shared with the rest of the audience and UNICEF representatives during group presentations.
Within the “CEMS and Social Partners” Skill Seminar the students and alumni also had an opportunity to learn about job and internship opportunities at UNICEF. A current CEMS NHH student Lise Hafskjold who is doing her internship at UNICEF now shared her experience with the audience. After the workshop the guests had a chance to mingle and network with the UNICEF representatives in a less formal environment. All in all, “CEMS and Social Partners” Skill Seminar held within the frames of CEMS 20th Anniversary at NHH was a success And we would like to thank UNICEF for its great contribution to the event. If you have any questions about the event, do not hesitate to contact CEMS Club at NHH.
Kenza Taoufik kenza.taoufik@cemsmail.org
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Charity Raffle at CEMS Gala Casino Night in CZ CEMS Club Prague decided to organize a charity raffle at the beginning of November 2012. This raffle was part of CEMS Gala Casino Night that is organized every winter semester in Prague. With the help of corporate partners, CEMS alumni and students, CEMS Club Prague managed to raise 10 000 CZK (400 euro) in the raffle. All this money was dedicated to 18 year old disabled student Jaroslav K. who was born with the autism syndrome. Jaroslav lives at ‘Jedlickuv Ustav’ that is the institute for disabled people where he also studies high school and has shown excellent results. Until last summer, he was financially supported by his grandfather
who unfortunately died in June 2012. Therefore, his family recently got into a difficult financial situation and found it hard to support Jaroslav in his studies. Thus, his mother decided to participate in a project called ‘Pay it forward’ organized by a local radio. This project was formed with the aim to provide support to someone who really needed it. There were almost 800 requests for help. “We decided to financially support his studies after we read about his difficult life journey. We wanted to give him a chance to finish business school that may be very important for his future”, explained Jana Lebrova, member of CEMS Club Prague. Together with the others she handed over a check of the collected money to Jaroslav. David Kolesa, CEMS Club Prague President, adds: “Even though Jaroslav was quite stressed about meeting us, he handled our visit great and it was a very enriching experience. Together with the check we gave Jaroslav a T-shirt of CEMS Club Prague and we were all rewarded by his sincere pleasure from this present.”
Jana Lebrova jana.lebrova@cems.com
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Balancing harmful emissions in Ireland With a view to responsible and sustainable development, CEMS Club Dublin has initiated a partnership programme with Celestial Green Ventures, an Irish company that develops REDD+ Natural Capital Credits. The majority of CEMS students who come to study at UCD have to travel to Dublin, generating high emissions by long distance air travel. This problem is further accentuated by students travelling to attend the 2012 Budapest Career Forum. The CEMS Club Dublin has taken the initiative to Carbon Balance the harmful emissions from these flights in a move that will see the Club apply a greener ethos to its activities. From this academic year, The Club will also balance all the flights taken by the Student Board representatives from different universities attending the student board meetings. Celestial Green Ventures has a forward looking approach to Carbon Balancing, which looks not only at the value of the carbon stocks, but also at ensuring that biodiversity and local stakeholders can see direct benefits from the projects. These projects, based mainly in the Brazilian Amazon region, aim at ensuring a sustainable future, not only for the local community, but also for future generations beyond the borders of Brazil.
CEMS Dublin believes that sustainable development and a successful business need not be mutually exclusive, and this partnership sees direct benefits for both sides. Celestial Green Ventures gains from the expertise of top business students and the students in turn gain practical and hands-on business experience. This is an ongoing partnership with the real benefits being seen by the environment, with an estimated 100+ tonnes of carbon balancing to date. This is the same amount of carbon saved annually by approximately 200 rugby pitches worth of rainforest, according to savetherainforest.org.
Seรกn Greif sean.greif@cemsmail.org
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The SteakHolders Charity Concert in Spain "In October 2012, six souls with the same musical inclination got together and gave birth to the project called; The Steakholders. Among these were CEMSiesDaniel Georges, Kristian Hilger and Jo Holmsen, the latter two at the time were on an exchange at ESADE. Allying themselves with local students as well as other internationals, the band performed their
"One Night Only"-show at the concert hall "Sala KGB" in Barcelona, giving the audience a two hour set filled with rock, punk and funk from the last four decades. The band had fun, the audience had fun, and on top of this all the profits from the concert, a total of â‚Ź478, were donated to the charity of the local CEMS Club for schoolbuilding in Madagascar."
Jo Holmsen Jo.holmsen.skybak.holmsen@ cemsmail.org
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Rotterdam Cares, so do we During the fall semester of 2012 we established a collaboration with a nonprofit organisation called Rotterdam Cares. In Rotterdam it connects various groups in society and inspires young professionals and companies to engage in volunteering activities. Throughout the semester CEMS Club Rotterdam has been offering various volunteering possibilities for students, some of which include Baking pancakes with the elderly, Volunteering in an evening school for mentally disabled students, and Playing games with children.
However, Rotterdam CEMS students found Volunteering in an evening school as the most appealing possibility. Throughout the semester several students helped in the school during various classes and whats even better is the positive feedback we got from the participants. One of the students wrote, “Overall, I did enjoy helping out! I think it is important, especially in our highly competitive and often ruthless business world, to consciously stop once in a while and to recall basic human values, to get your feet back on the ground. These activities help you do that!�
We are content with this achievement and CEMS Club Rotterdam will continue this collaboration to inspire students to help others and make socially responsible decisions in their future careers.
Julija Babre julija.babre@cemsmail.org
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Donating blood in Austria In the course of WU Vienna’s ÖH Social Day in November 2012, the CEMS Club Vienna encouraged fellow CEMSies to donate blood and therefore organized a collaborative blood donation event for CEMS students. Every year, about half a million units of blood in form of blood conserves is required to meet the country’s hospitals’ needs. For this reason the Austrian Red Cross is organizing blood donation events in the entire country during the whole year. Motivated by the feeling of saving lives, providing blood conserves for people in need, and further being incentivised by receiving a discounted meal at one of Vienna’s most traditional restaurants near university, motivated people to donate blood.
A large number of CEMS students showed interest in doing something good and therefore, signed up for the first event of the CEMS Club Vienna’s CRS Team. Even though regulations of the ‘Red Cross’ required suitable donors to have a high level of German language skills, many fellow students took part in this initiative. At the bottom line more than 10 % of all blood collected within WU Vienna’s ÖH Social Day was donated by CEMS Master Students. Of course the help, which was provided with these donations, was highly appreciated. We thank every single participant greatly for their participation and hope we could raise awareness and motivate everyone for becoming future blood donators on a regular basis.
Arnold Wirnsberger arnold.wirnsberger@cemsmail.com
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Humanitarian Week in Russia In year 2012 CEMS Club Saint Petersburg decided to fight against local problems in Saint Petersburg. Although we understand the importance of being committed to the global projects, we feel that if we aim at changing the world, we first need to start with ourselves. And also, as we aim to develop our CEMS Club, we need to increase our local community impact. To attract attention to the necessity of being socially responsible, to help others, to preserve nature, we have made a set of events during the Humanitarian Week: • photo contest • fundraising and assistance to a local NGO • lecture and discussion about business and ecology
First of all, CSR committee of the CEMS Club has decided to choose an organisation with who we would like to develop long-term relationships with. We decided to choose “Upsala circus”. The concept of the HW was developed through the idea of bringing some positive value to Upsala Circus through our activities. Majority of the events aimed at fundraising and all the money was donated to Upsala Circus. One of the most successful events was the auction, held during the “Help Upsala!” party, thanks to which a high amount money was collected: students sold the dinners, dances, master-classes – everything they were good at.
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Our volunteers were very helpful to Upsala Circus when organizing the Museum night. Students assisted in welcoming the guests and with some other organizational issues. After the Humanitarian week was over, we started another project with Upsala – presentations for their personnel on the useful topics they ask us about – such as how to make presentations, project management, time management, etc. If this project becomes successful, we will do some presentations for children – to teach them some professional skills they may need. Upsala Circus Upsala Circus is a unique project, which shows children and teenagers from social risk groups in St. Petersburg with the method of circus pedagogy an alternative to the street and integrates them into the society. As the only organization of it's kind in Russia, Upsala Circus directly connects the professional circus and theatre art, with social work. By everyday trainings in the circus and attendance at circus festivals, the children
and teenagers from social risk groups experience exciting and difficult challenges. The circus is referring to "high risk" nearly like the life on the street. It simply appeals to them with magic, lets them explore their individual skills and possibilities, makes them stronger and motivates them to create their lives in society in an active way. (Find more about Upsala on - http://upsala-zirk.org)
Ekaterina Kondratenko Galya Korukhchyan ekaterina.kondratenko@gmail.com galya.korukhchyan@cemsmail.org
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CSR activities in Poland CEMS Chance CEMS Chance is a CSR initiative addressed to ambitious, talented and hard-working secondary school pupils. The aim of the project is to give an opportunity to those who are in a difficult family, health or financial situation and to make them aware of their potential and development prospects. Children take part in workshops, lectures and case studies conducted by academic and business environment personages, as well as our partners’ representatives. Young people are invited for three-day, free-of-charge event which includes workshops, accommodation, meals and other attractions
participation in the workshops. The second edition of the event took place in spring 2012. The project was a remarkable success.
Marta Kowalska, Kracow, Poland “CEMS Chance offers excellent workshops that are chaired by professionals. For example, I attended a workshop that was held by well-known radio journalist who told us how how present ourselves and use our voice. It was great experience.”
The goal of CEMS Chance, which we have set is to show young people how they can influence their paths of development. Equally important is to motivate young people to be active, improve their skills and work to meet their own dreams. The inspiration for the youth certainly is meeting with students from Warsaw School of Economics and
Magda Orzechowska Michał Jermanowski magdallenaorzechowska@gmail.com jermanowski@gmail.com
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The evidence of this achievement are for sure the opinions of the participants, their parents and all those associated with the project. CEMS Chance allows developing soft skills and planning future development path. The substantive part of the event is completed with
the meetings with interesting personalities, integration activities and visiting Warsaw. All workshops were held at the Warsaw School of Economics. We have so far cooperated with, among others,Ernst&Young Foundation, Deloitte, British Council, Unilever and Henkel.
CEMS Club Warsaw plant a tree In order to raise awareness for environmental issues among CEMS students, on occasion of the Earth's day April 22nd.we have planted a real tree in the park besides the Warsaw School of Economics.We have selected the
appropriate species for the surrounding and chose the right place. We also prepared a time capsule, which will be opened by an academic director of the CEMS program in 10 years from now, and thecommemorative plaque which was placed on the wall of the CEMS Club Warsaw Office.
CEMS Running – sport and charity The goal of the CEMS Running, the yearround event dedicated to CEMS Club members, is to draw students’ attention to the importance of healthy living and create the group of students interested in running. At the same time we want our effort to become profitable for selected CEMS Club Warsaw plant a tree
charities. Our CEMS Club group has been training regularly throughout the year. As aresult wewill take part in the charity marathons (first will take place in October 2012). Each completed run means a financial support from one of our corporate partners for the chosen charity purpose. CEMS Running
Igor Jakubiak
Marek Jakubów
igor.jakubiak@gmail.com
jakubow.marek@gmail.com
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We appreciate the CSR contribution of the CEMS Clubs, organising CSR activities and willing to share their practices with others:
CEMS Club Louvain CEMS Club Copenhagen
CEMS Club Cologne CEMS Club Rotterdam CEMS Club Budapest CEMS Club Bergen
CEMS Club Prague CEMS Club Dublin CEMS Club Barcelona CEMS Club Rotterdam
CEMS Club Vienna CEMS Club Saint Petersburg CEMS Club Warsaw
Our team aims at enhancing the CSR and Sustainable development practices within the CEMS schools. We would like to hear your opinion about how together we can achieve more and how we can improve the awareness about the activities organised! Get in touch - share your opinion with us!
The booklet was prepared by the CEMS Student Board CSR Team: CEMS-Social-Responsibility-Team@cemsmail.org Sangram Rane Ekaterina Kondratenko Cristina Avramov Sarianne Lehto