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In This Issue
Editor's Note
Recommendations for the ‘G4’ Sustainability Reporting Guidelines
Today, approximately 2,000 companies issue sustainability reports every year, and many of them follow the Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) guidelines.
In preparation for GRI’s latest generation of guidelines (due to launch by 2013), we surveyed BSR staff in each of our offices about areas for improvement. Our Advisory Services Managing Director Dunstan Allison Hope and Director Virginia Terry distilled the survey results into four recommendations. BSR plans to play a constructive role in the process to create the G4 guidelines, and we welcome your thoughts on the most important improvements to be made.
This week, we also hear from Walmart CEO Mike Duke on his company’s planned US$20 billion investment in women’s economic empowerment initiatives, and we look at a new report highlighting 10 successful business models devoted to improving the health of women and children (full disclosure, one is BSR’s HERproject).
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In Depth
Four Improvements for the Global Reporting Initiative’s ‘G4’ Guidelines
By Dunstan Allison Hope, Managing Director, Advisory Services, BSR
As the Global Reporting Initiative begins work on the next iteration of its sustainability reporting guidelines, BSR took a staff-wide survey to recommend areas for improvement.
Read more →
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On the Record
Walmart CEO: ‘Holding Women Back Holds Economies Back’
Last week, Walmart made a US$20 billion commitment to increase sourcing from female-owned U.S. businesses and to double the amount it sources from female-owned businesses globally by 2016. Through a broader initiative, the company will also offer women on farms and in factories training, market access, and career opportunities; provide low-income women with job-skills training and access to higher education; increase the gender diversity among its major suppliers; and grant US$100 million to organizations supporting women’s economic empowerment.
Walmart President and CEO Mike Duke explained why he thinks this is an important step:
“Holding women back holds families back; it holds economies back. … This [commitment] is absolutely the right thing to do, there’s no question about that. But it’s also absolutely the right thing to do for our business.”
–Mike Duke, President and CEO, Walmart Stores, Inc. (September 14, 2011)
For more on this topic, read BSR’s recent work on women and sustainability.
Toolbox
Innovative Solutions to Improving Women and Children’s Health
By Elissa Goldenberg, Associate, Advisory Services, BSR
A new UN report explores how to improve women and children’s health globally. The report details what’s needed for successful development programs, outlines critical health needs, and highlights 10 innovative business models (including BSR’s HERproject) for delivering health services and products.
Projects include:
Colalife: This initiative uses existing Coca-Cola product-distribution networks to dispense affordable anti-diarrhea kits to rural households.
SMS for Life: This program uses mobile phones, SMS messages, and electronic-mapping technology to track inventory levels of anti-malaria medicines in rural and under-resourced regions.
Grameen Intel: This initiative uses cell phones and software to identify high-risk pregnancies, track patients, allocate resources, and train community health workers.
For more information on investing in women’s health, contact BSR’s HERproject Manager Racheal Yeager.
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