$ 1 : 16
For every $1 of value invested, One Young World Ambassadors deliver $16 of social value, based on a Social Return on Investment analysis of 43 Ambassador-led initiatives addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2024/25
SDG Impact Tracker
Interested in supporting impactful initiatives led by young leaders? Search this database of over 430 projects from the One Young World Community to find out more.
Oropopo Indigenous Research Centre
Oropopo Indigenous Research Center works to preserve indigenous culture in Costa Rica. The Centre conducts research on indigenous culture, indigenous workshops, indigenous handicrafts expositions, culture tours, Cultural Volunteer program, as well as working on forest restoration to ensure their environments are protected.
Nature for All
Nature for All supports increased access to the outdoors for people with visual impairments and other physical disabilities through advocacy and education. They have worked on projects including braille nature trails, accessible park features, and inclusive schools and sports.
El Agua Es Oro
El Agua Es Oro provides a mobile laundry and water recycling service to improve peri-urban water access and resilience. This solution saves time for individuals, time which can be reinvested in education and work. It also saves clean water which can be redirected to hygiene, cooking and drinking.
Revofa
Revofa is a peer-to-peer rental platform for clothes. It is a social marketplace where people swap clothing or fix and alter them - extending the life cycle of fashion pieces. ‘Revofa’ stands for Revolve Fashion which brings the meaning of the ability for fashion to rotate and go around.
World Tech Makers
Ilana and her team at WORLD TECH have pioneered on-site coding boot camps in Latin America since 2014. It provides rapid skills training that is relevant, efficient, and highly marketable. The organisation applied for Lead2030 in 2019 aiming to elevate its impact by receiving visibility and ongoing mentorship support from a world-leading organisation.
With the $50,000 grant, WORLD TECH launched three new service lines within World Tech Makers in 2020. These include the Digital DNA platform offering skills development for remote learners and workers, iOT kits for 21st-century activists, and the ground-breaking ePioneers initiative to make Colombia a nation for digital nomads. Deloitte helped launch these initiatives with support on a weekly basis from both the UK and the Colombia offices.
The year posed various challenges due to global events, but with the help of Deloitte’s partnership, Ilana developed as a leader with new socio-emotional and communication skills. Besides launching new services, the organisation implemented major pilot programmes with each one of its recently created branches in both Bogota and Medellin.
The partnership has extended well beyond the set one year of the Lead2030 programme, and with Deloitte’s continued support, WORLD TECH will consolidate its three service lines and Ilana aims to be a pioneer in spreading the ‘digital nomad spirit’ in Colombia, motivating other women through her example.
- 20 teachers & 120 children trained with iOT kits for 3 months
- 100,000 students reached by Digital DNA pilot
- $2B potential boost to economy from ePioneer by 2024
rePurpose
rePurpose is a social enterprise building a global community of conscious consumers going Plastic Neutral, the world’s first plastic credit platform offering financing solutions that stem the flow of ocean plastic. For every $0.25 contributed to the platform, rePurpose guarantees to remove and recycle one additional pound of plastic waste, the platform then connects with an ethical impact partner who removes a further 100 pounds of waste from the ecosystem.
The team at rePurpose have had access to the Credit Suisse team with a broad range of expertise, through a number of mentorship sessions. With Credit Suisse support, rePurpose has been able to make progress on all three pillars of their strategy; tech development, expansion of the impact ecosystem through new partners, and growth of the core business through strategic marketing and participation in visible campaigns. There are also discussions on how best to utilise and integrate blockchain technology within their business model. The partnership has been mutually beneficial as Credit Suisse has used the platform to offset its own plastic footprint.
Lead2030 will continue to support the organisation's goal of diverting over 800 million kilograms of plastic waste away from our oceans and landfills by 2022. The implementation of blockchain will help rePurpose to verify the ethical impact of its waste removal projects, and Credit Suisse hopes to extend its own plastic offset programme and help rePurpose to secure further commercial contracts.
Blend Edu
Thalita is the CEO of Blend Edu, a social impact start-up that offers training and educational experiences to promote diversity and inclusion in Brazilian companies in order to create an inclusive future through the power of education. In 2018, the team at Blend Edu developed Diversidade SA, the first virtual learning community focused on diversity in Brazil.
Thalita has received mentorship from Bristol Myers Squibb executives based in the USA and Brazil to enhance Blend Edu’s digital marketing and content development. This support has included connecting Thalita to influencers to contribute to Blend Edu’s podcasts and videos. In addition, Bristol Myers Squibb connected Thalita with the We Are All Human Foundation, an organisation that works across industries, focused on diversity & inclusion as a way to achieve equity. Thalita is implementing the funding provided from Bristol Myers Squibb to improve the user experience of her virtual learning community.
Lead2030 will enable the team to develop Diversidade SA, including providing more accessible content so that the platform is able to reach more users. The support is all in pursuit of Blend Edu’s three priority areas: marketing and growth, networking, and technology and product design.
Aeloi
Sonika co-founded Aeloi, a fintech social enterprise specialising in tracing climate impact finance. Aeloi aims to become the premier marketplace to invest in green, grassroots entrepreneurs, using software that tracks impact sector funds using digital tokens. The organisation helps informal-sector micro-entrepreneurs access tailored loan products and automated, personalised services, and increase their business income.
The team meets with a representative of SC Ventures bi-monthly who with them, has explored areas such as design-thinking, their operational model, and connecting them with the Standard Chartered offices in Nepal. Already the partnership has developed Aeloi’s interview process, scaled their training methodology, and opened new avenues for partnerships.
Lead2030 will enable Aeloi to expand to 12,000 borrowers and vendors in 2021. Along with many targets for the organisation, it aims to increase its system’s security by adopting blockchain technology.
Climatenza
Akshay Makar founded Climatenza, a solar thermal company working in India and Chile that develops and applies concentrated solar power technology to generate clean and high-value energy for industrial applications. Akshay’s clean energy solution can replace carbon-intensive fossil-fuel technology used in industry and manufacturing. Climatenza aims to complete projects by 2025 which will achieve a target reduction of 746,861 CO2 emissions over the 25 year lifetime of the solar fields.
bp’s support for Climatenza is coordinated by One Young World Ambassador, Ross McRobert, and is operated with an ‘open door policy’. This support provides Akshay with access to experts who are at the forefront of bp’s net-zero ambition. Since winning the Lead2030 challenge for clean and affordable energy, Climatenza has progressed to pilot stages with strategic customers in order to provide them with the confidence to make long-term investments. Climatenza also innovated to remove front-ended capital-intensive outlays, which can often be barriers to companies making a shift to clean energy.
With the support of bp mentors experienced in clean energy ventures, Climatenza is preparing to launch a fundraising round in 2021 or seek a partner through which to scale their operations. Within the next five years, Climatenza aims to build and operate solar thermal projects with a combined scale of 55.5 MW.
CAYSTI
CAYSTI's mission is to develop and promote innovative tech tools to leverage egalitarian access to quality education in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics. The organisation’s training centre in Cameroon is dedicated to low-income students and refugees from neighbouring countries and has trained over 6,500 young people by using ground-breaking learning tools.
CAYSTI has weekly meetings with Deloitte Cameroon, helping support the strategy development of two main initiatives. The first is the $1 Scholar Programme, an inclusive programme that aims to give equal access to coding and soft skills classes to youth in Francophone Africa. The second is the publication of an educational comic book and aligned workshops, helping youth better understand the concept of entrepreneurship.
The $1 Scholar Programme aims to impact 30,000 individuals in the first phase and 300,000 individuals in the second in targeted states of Cameroon, Gabon, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, DRC, Togo, and Benin. Further plans for collaboration include CAYSTI opening its platform to content aligned with Deloitte’s WorldClass ambition to support 50 million people by 2030 with job skills, educational outcomes, and access to opportunities.
BIVE
BIVE facilitates access to timely, high quality and affordable private healthcare services for 19,000+ Colombian people. Its BR13 project provides leadership tools and technical knowledge on non-communicable diseases, mental, sexual and reproductive health for rural youth, with the purpose of reducing avoidable mortality and morbidity in rural Colombia.
The partnership with AstraZeneca is helping to extend the BR13 initiative, constructing a teaching plan and mental health student guides and materials. It is also forming vital alliances with educational government offices and institutions. The team has benefited from mentorship in the field of policy communication, which will help the team scale up their work to revolutionise Colombia’s school system.
AstraZeneca will link the team with its Young Health Programme Colombia, which launched in early 2021. Likewise, they are connecting BIVE with two of AstraZeneca’s partner organisations to enhance the value proposition of the BR13 Project.
Deloitte Latin America Social Covid Response
Deloitte Latin America Social Covid Response - Colombia
Natalia Jiménez Esguerra
Business for Social Good
Natalia coordinates corporate responsibility and sustainability initiatives on behalf of Deloitte's Spanish Latin America firm In addition to this responsibility, Natalia leads the Social Impact Committee for the London School of Economics alumni association in Colombia, through which she is launching a programme to mentor 23 NGOs and social enterprises in 2021.
As part of Deloitte Spanish Latin America’s Social COVID-19 Response, Natalia developed a series of nine webinars titled “Impactando para Impactar”. The firm was offering free webinars to clients and potential clients on a diverse range of topics, which led Natalia to design a series to support One Young World Ambassadors.
Natalia and her Deloitte colleagues collaborated with One Young World Ambassadors in Latin America to identify topics of most interest to young leaders in the region. Topics included:
- Coping with the financial impact of COVID-19 on businesses
- Changing the way of working and cyber defence | COVID-19: Cyber-attacks at the remote office
- The organisation in times of disruption: Impacts for the future of work
- Scenario planning-How to prepare for new business scenarios?
- Managing the business cash cycle during and after the pandemic
- Financial literacy - Personal finance in times of crisis
- How to find a job in times of COVID-19
- Leadership and resilient organisations: 5 new realities organisations are facing
The first series of webinars had over 17 Deloitte professionals volunteer and reached 60 One Young World Ambassadors across the region of 16 countries. It leveraged the skills and knowledge of Deloitte’s professionals to support young grassroots leaders in the region, enabling them to find solutions to the challenges of the pandemic and continue to support the region in achieving the SDGs.
Step Up: Totva
Step-Up is Deloitte India’s largest professional skills-based volunteering programme centred on providing skills-based volunteering experiences that allow its practitioners to apply and develop their professional and leadership skills to create positive social impact in areas of personal passion. Dhritiman has been working with Toybank as a Step-Up project lead since late 2019.
Toybank is an Indian charity that works with 50,000+ children and 2,000+ teachers to propagate play-enabled learning. They develop programmes and initiatives focused on the behavioural and mental growth of at-risk children in their most impressionable years of life through “Play-based Learning”.
Through the Step-Up initiative, Dhritiman worked with the Toybank team to develop a five-year strategic roadmap designing the donor targeting, digital outreach and data interpretation/operations processes for the organisation. He led the project with support from a group of colleagues and conducted visioning workshops with the organisation to identify their leadership priorities and align their vision.
The engagement focussed on three major areas. The first was to develop the donor outreach and digital marketing strategy. The second was to help Toybank interpret and present the impact data it collects. The third was to derive insights from their data and create an operations strategy to transform Toybank into a standardised process-driven organisation.
Dhritiman leveraged his own expertise in Deloitte’s strategy consulting to help the non-profit standardise its processes, scale up operations, and secure sustainable funding streams. This will in turn help Toybank develop more beneficial and long-term support of at-risk children, their families and the teachers responsible for their education.
Green Team - Janssen
Green Team - Janssen - Germany
Martha Griese
Business for Social Good
The Green Team was an initiative in Janssen founded by the management board to try and help the company transition to a more environmentally friendly position. After attending the One Young World Summit in London in 2019, Martha became determined to tackle the climate emergency and joined the project team consisting of more than 50 employees, who contribute and implement their ideas for a sustainable future.
The Green Team worked according to sub-streams, addressing travel to and from the offices, food in the workplace, waste management, the campus, printing, and domestic and international travel. The members of the Green Team are highly engaged with the task of improving the green credentials of their office.
Martha works primarily on the first stream, helping to mitigate the environmental impact of over 1,000 employees commuting to a non-urban office in Neuss. This includes a service through which employees can lease bikes through the company, to encourage green travel. Already, 300 employees have explored this scheme with 160 applications for the bikes. There are now also twice daily shuttles to and from the train station, to encourage public transport once employees return to the campus.
The Green Team is making significant inroads into the carbon footprint of the office in Neuss. Healthier food is being served, including eco-friendly milk alternatives, and 7% more vegetarian food is being consumed officewide. The green campus is being developed with 3,000 new plants, and plastic waste is being reduced by 700 bags daily.
In 2021, the team structure is changing to be less divided into separate substreams, helping members to better collaborate on their work. On transport, they will be launching a car-sharing app, and try to increase the availability of bikes in different locations. The team is also looking into increasing recycling capabilities, reducing emissions of company cars, and introducing many more schemes to help transform the office into a more environmentally friendly workplace.
Gabriella Napier, GE
Gabriella Napier, GE - United States
Gabriella Napier
Leadership Biography
Gabriella has a long history with General Electric, beginning as a student intern at GE Aviation and GE Healthcare, before joining GE Healthcare as part of the Operations Management Leadership programme in 2014. A seminal moment in Gabriella’s growth as a leader in GE, was being part of the company’s delegation at One Young World 2016 in Ottawa. Gabriella was already a socially-conscious employee, but had no particular focus in her activity. She was introduced to the Sustainable Development Goals, which helped to give her a framework for her future work.
Mental health was a significant focus at the 2016 Summit, and it highlighted a disconnect in GE for Gabriella. Despite the substantial resources available to employees, she felt that there was still little engagement on the issue. She communicated with her peers to start conversations and make people aware of available support, although this did not develop into a formal initiative, it helped her gain experience in creating movements within GE. Having tested the waters, Gabriella was looped into a project with Assist International through the GE Foundation, the philanthropic organisation of GE. This experience set the stage for Gabriella and past One Young World delegates from the Summit to found GEneration Impact.
Though not officially affiliated with the company, this network is motivated by individual corporate social responsibility, and driven by GE employees. What began as the three of them, has grown under Gabriella’s guidance to a core team of five people, which will grow further in the coming year. GEneration impact provides pro-bono skills on projects impacting the UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development. The GEneration Impact core operational team source projects and resources teams of roughly five people per project, and this past year has supported 15 non-profits, NGOs, and social enterprises. Whilst primarily based in the USA, they have significant participation in India, Brazil, and parts of Europe.
It is Gabriella’s role in the team to identify the projects for support. One of the largest impacts this year has also been working with Catie’s Closet, an organisation that keeps lower income kids in school by providing clothing and toiletries in schools for children without these basic essentials. The project teams Generation Impact has created has helped Catie’s Closet to develop their website and an app to facilitate donations, secure a sustainable supply chain, and expand their marketing plan.
GEneration Impact continues to grow in popularity, and Gabriella and her team aim to continue to increase their capacity to connect motivated employees with social impact projects. For Gabriella, GEneration Impact continues to offer management experience and personal development opportunities. It has also given her greater access to new colleagues and parts of the business, and individuals and organisations outside GE.
Gabriella continues to set an example for other young leaders, showing that they can develop their own leadership in their business by providing invaluable support to social impact initiatives internally and externally.
How to use to the SDG Tracker
Search for projects by the following case study categories:
- Ambassador-led Initiatives: qualitative and quantitative analysis of the social impact of projects which are led by young leaders in the Community.
- Business for Social Good: written case studies for initiatives ran by corporate partner organisations, led by young Ambassadors/employees.
- Leadership Biographies: short biographies of Ambassadors who are growing into influential leaders for social good in some of the world’s largest companies, organisations, and in government.
- One Young World Funded Projects: detailed case studies of grant recipients from One Young World's funding opportunities, including Lead2030, Rebuilding Communities, and the COVID Young Leaders Fund.