Community involvement idea ready for lift-off

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US-based CSR membership organization Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) has formed a partnership with the Asian think tank Global Institute For Tomorrow (Gift) aimed at setting up a programme to encourage corporate community involvement in the region.

The Young Leaders Programme will be billed as ‘a chance for young executives to apply their skills in collaboration with civil society and community organizations on projects that build social capital’.
It will be launched in July, with the first project set to take place in China's Yunnan Province in July.

The partnership was signed in San Francisco by Chandran Nair, founder and chief executive of Gift, and Aron Cramer, chief executive of BSR. Cramer said the project would ‘work to influence a fundamental shift in each participant’s understanding of business and its influence and impacts outside the boardroom through life-changing field-projects’. The idea has been backed by former US president Bill Clinton.

Gift is a pan-Asian, non-profit think tank that connects businesses, policy makers and civil  society ‘so they may find common ground from which to meet the challenges of globalization’. BSR, which has offices in the US, Europe and China, is a non-profit  business association that serves about 250 member companies and other Global 1000 enterprises.