$ 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 45 Ambassador-led initiatives addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2023
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.
Message in a Bottle
Philipp attended the One Young World Summit in 2018 having won Trelleborg’s internal competition, by giving an account of where he would like to see the company in the future. Philipp was one of a three person delegation, who each returned to present an initiative they were inspired to create after attending the Summit.
Philipp proposed “Message in a Bottle”, a company-wide campaign to eliminate single-use plastic from all 200 Trelleborg sites by the end of 2020. This idea was taken forward by and proposed to the senior executive team at Trelleborg, who gave the initiative unanimous backing. This was then returned to Henrik Dreyer, Employer Branding Manager and a fellow One Young World Summit attendee. They placed One Young World and the Ambassadors at the heart of their communications, distributing a video of Philipp to communicate the purpose and ambition of the initiative, and invite all branches and employees to join them in the “Message in a Bottle” movement. The project is monitored centrally, and they distribute a framework for implementing the change, and a vast majority of the 200 branches have already begun their journey to zero plastic. One successful example is in Turkey, where the Trelleborg site has completely removed plastic cups already which has eradicated the use of 560,000 plastic cups per year.
While Philipp is no longer directly involved in the implementation of his initiative, he is directly responsible for the change which has only just begun to have a highly significant impact in his workplace and on the environment.
Diversity and Inclusion Committee
Diversity and Inclusion Committee - Spain
Dehydys Pimentel
Business for Social Good
Dehydys has always had an interest in diversity & inclusion at BP. When she worked in Pangbourne, UK, she decided to tackle the lack of diversity in the engineering community head on, as Secretary of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee.
A “Women in Science” network already existed, but Dehydys identified an absence of any inclusive projects on sexual orientation. She was similarly shocked to discover a lack of awareness about Pride amongst her colleagues. Dehydys delivered Safe Space Training education programmes, to raise awareness around the language and facts surrounding sexual orientation. Around 40 people in the Pangbourne Office participated. They also started a Pride group, which received support from 60 allies and was supported by the Vice-President who used it as her platform to come out to her colleagues.
Since moving to Madrid, Dehydys has tackled similar issues. Language is a particular issue for the LGBTQ community in Spain, due to gendered words. Her advocacy for BP Pride has encouraged the group to use gender neutral language in all policy. Her group has established education sessions, a space at Pride, and an allies community. The group is also incorporating transgender information into their awareness sessions, and mental health support. In Madrid, it has built a community of 80 allies, and provided educational safe space sessions to 70 staff members at BP, including 20 members of the leadership team.
Mental health issues have become intertwined with Dehydys’s focus. After attending the One Young World Summit at The Hague, she distributed a survey on the topic to understand the impact people’s work has on their mental health in the office. While there is health insurance cover treatment, there is still a significant stigma around seeking out treatment. The ambitions of this branch of her work is to establish a working group and incorporate a Mental Health section into BP’s annual survey to its 70,000 employees.
Hikma House
Hikma House - Algeria
Mohamed Labadi
Business for Social Good
Mohamed has co-founded a variety of innovative and impactful organisations in Algeria. Singularity Computing is a company which develops and provides engineering intelligence software solutions that radically changes the way engineers design, develop and build complex engineered products and systems. Frontiers Lab is the first African independent R&D lab with a mission is to create scientific and technology innovations that contribute to society. Mohamed is also a founding member of the Algerian Foundation for Science & Technology, an organisation which in 2019 provided training courses and workshops for more than 50 Algerian researchers, professors, and PhD students.
Mohamed also co-founded a project called Hikma House, centred on using consultation and research as the means to generate social good. It is an Algerian Think Tank that focuses on economics, public policy, industrial strategy, entrepreneurship, and education. It provides strategy and policy advice to government agencies, ministries, educational institutions, and public services organisations in its areas of expertise.
Hikma House also runs a mentoring programme for young people, recent graduates and students. The programme has mentored more than 80 students, through which 68 got admission offers from top universities in Europe, Canada, USA, South Korea, and China, and 40 among them have secured full or partial scholarships and fellowships. It also runs a professional mentorship programme to link recent graduates with careers, and 200 young Algerians have benefited so far.
The policy and mentorship branches of Hikma House are invigorating the education system in Algeria and those within it with the expertise they acquire from their research.
Leribe Infrastructure Development Project
Leribe Infrastructure Development Project - Lesotho
Nkileng Sebeela-Khati
Business for Social Good
Nkileng is the CEO of Natureworld Group Holdings (NGH), an organisation which develops sustainable infrastructure in pursuit of smarter cities in Lesotho and Southern Africa. In 2019, NGH partnered with MZU Architects in Johannesburg to rebuild the town of Maputsoe through the Leribe Infrastructure Development.
Maputsoe, with a population of 32,120, is situated in the district of Leribe, which has a wider population of around 337,500. It is notorious for high crime and HIV rates. NGH approached the national and local governments with a plan to develop the city to increase the economic capacity of the city and district.
NGH’s development project includes acquiring land from current inhabitants. To ensure that the community is not damaged, the people who move are guaranteed with decent, long-term employment on the project and in the new development once construction is complete, as well as receiving fair compensation for their property. The jobs require low expertise as a prerequisite and develop skills through training and practical experience, to upskill the population and workforce.
The development itself includes a large, district hospital to help prevent and treat the high HIV rates. Also, developing sustainable hotels to increase the capacity for tourism and travel will boost the economy once the city is established. A shopping complex will provide a hub for local businesses to prosper. A university will improve access to further education. Finally, a solar energy plant will ensure the environmental sustainability of the city. Smart technology will limit crime, monitor traffic, light the city sustainably, and maximise the efficiency of energy usage. These different aspects to the development are being funded by a mixture of government and private investors.
Rawabi Project
Rawabi Project - MENA [coordinating region]
Ruba Qadi
Business for Social Good
Rawabi is the largest private sector project in Palestine. The vision of Bashar Masri, Palestinian-American Businessman, the city is fully fledged and built on the three pillars of work, live and grow and holds Palestine’s first ever tech hub.
The project is developed by Bayti Real Estate Investment Company, which is the fruit of a strategic partnership between Massar International and the state of Qatar. Ruba Qadi, a 24 year old engineer and One Young World Ambassador, is running the commercial and business development in the city. Job creation is very important and the organisation is focusing on bringing international companies to open branches and offices in Rawabi. The development project provides everything from infrastructure to highly skilled engineers and workers, all of which will play a vital role in decreasing the high unemployment rate in Palestine.
The Rawabi Project set out to rectify this by creating between 3,000 and 5,000 IT and STEM jobs and attracting investment from leading tech companies. Part of this is a co-working space for accelerating start-ups. Over 20 companies (both startups and established companies) are already working in the city, and they hope to attract more international investors. They have already made an agreement with international ICT clusters, such as Cluj ICT Cluster in Romania and The DMZ at Ryerson University in Canada. The city has already created over 10,000 jobs, both direct and indirect. Since 2015, when the city was founded, 5,000 people have inhabited the city.
Ruba continues to drive for the development of the city, business, and spread the message of the Rawabi beyond Palestine and the region.
Arosa Tourismus
Arosa is an Alpine resort in the Schanfigg Valley in Switzerland, and receives thousands of tourists every year during both the winter and summer seasons along with many other destinations in the Alps. However, Arosa is working on sustainability initiatives which will set it apart from other similar destinations.
Sayuri is assisting the Executive Board in pursuing Arosa 2030, a vision to achieve a 100% destination sustainability by 2030. The first step towards this aim was a conservation project launched in 2018, in cooperation with the animal welfare NGO, ForPaws. The project seeks to protect circus and restaurant bears, which were before illegally held, by rehoming them in the Arosa Bear Sanctuary. This doubles as an educational and leisure facility for tourists, where they can visit the three bears currently protected and housed in the sanctuary. The project can save up to five bears.
This project indicates a social consciousness that is at the heart of this push for sustainability and is part of a move to change the culture and mindset of the tourists and tourism industry in the region. Arosa 2030 as a whole, is a campaign which is driving stakeholders in the region such as transport companies, hotels, restaurants and many more to join the push to be an industry leader in sustainability.
Ultimately sustainability is not just an ambition for Arosa, but a necessity for Alpine tourism in general and Arosa Tourismus aims to be a pioneer in the industry. Sayuri and the organisation are in the process of organising a One Young World Caucus, exploring the topics on sustainability and animal welfare in tourism, and purpose marketing.
Deloitte France Foundation: Mentorship Programme for Social Entrepreneurs
Deloitte France Foundation: Mentorship Programme for Social Entrepreneurs - France
Cyrielle Sénéchal-Chevallier
Business for Social Good
Cyrielle has participated in social entrepreneurship projects and mentorship programmes since joining Deloitte as a consultant in 2012. She attended her first Summit in Ottawa in 2016, and has returned 3 times. The Summit in Ottawa inspired her to leverage the expertise of Deloitte professionals to best support social entrepreneurs.
Cyrielle now works both for Deloitte as a consultant in social innovation serving external clients and for the Deloitte France Foundation, which operates around two main pillars: education and social innovation. She is responsible for the latter. Cyrielle has mobilised a network of mentors who donate time and expertise to supporting social entrepreneurs. These mentorships last for several months, with participants receiving from two to eight hours of personalised business mentorship per month from a wide selection of professionals across Deloitte’s offices in France. Around 200 entrepreneurs have participated in the mentorship programme, pitch sessions or workshops.
These initiatives have leveraged the skills of 300 Deloitte France practitioners using their professional expertise to maximise the efficiency of the projects’ societal impacts with the benefit passed onto social entrepreneurs. After attending the 2018 Summit in the Hague, Cyrielle and other Deloitte employees established a partnership with an NGO called Kabubu through a fellow One Young World Ambassador who volunteered for the organisation. A team at Deloitte including One Young World Ambassadors now works to support the NGO in integrating refugees into businesses in France.
While Cyrielle’s work is focused in France it fits within Deloitte’s global WorldClass vision to impact 50 million people by 2030 with skills development, education and professional opportunities.
Sherbrooke Community Involvement
Sherbrooke Community Involvement - Canada
Joanie Normandin
Business for Social Good
Upon returning from the 2018 Summit in The Hague, Joanie was eager to build social involvement in her organisation. She wanted to engage with the 400 employees in her BRP office in Sherbrooke, Québec, and mobilise them to pursue impactful projects in their local community and beyond.
She established the Sherbrooke Community Involvement Committee to explore potential initiatives. The group consulted with senior management and their peers to identify areas and ambitions which align with BRP’s donation politics. After this research, the Committee settled on three primary focuses:
- Environment - Tree-planting initiative with Action St-François
- Food & Education - Canadian Breakfast Club
- Health – Fundraising activities and events with the CHUS Foundation
The Committee’s initiative was launched in September 2019. In October, the first activity took place and 19 employees took part in a project where they planted approximately 140 new trees. The Committee send a selection of employees twice weekly to two different schools in Sherbrooke to serve around 70 breakfasts to under-privileged school children. It is also running fundraising activities for the CHUS Foundation, the local University Hospital.
Across these different projects, the Committee has managed to engage more than 80 of the office’s 400 employees in volunteering activities in the few months they have been operational.
The Committee is now supported by six members, who meet every five weeks. Together, they ensure these different projects maintain engagement and momentum, whilst simultaneously exploring new potential outreach programmes. Its is currently looking into two new initiatives, working with the elderly and people with disabilities. Joanie is adamant for the need for local ownership of these projects, but hopes that the framework for volunteer engagement will be replicated in BRP offices around the world.
Global Purpose Platform
Global Purpose Platform - Netherlands
Seval Cicek, Rani Krisnamurthi
Business for Social Good
Seval, Rani, and three other colleagues attended One Young World The Hague in 2018 as part of the first delegation representing Centrient Pharmaceuticals. They returned to the company with the message “If not me, then who”, and the sense that no one is too small to make a positive social impact.
They realised there was a lack of platform for passionate young professionals to get together to co-create. Thus, they established an internal “Global Purpose Platform” led by young professionals. The purpose of the platform is to engage and empower young professionals to work on initiatives contributing to social and environmental issues and their own professional development, through collaborative means and engagement programmes.
There are now a total of 11 One Young World Ambassadors based in a variety of locations around the world leading their operations.. In Mexico, kick off of purpose platform included external NGO and government authorities to inspire employees to take action and bring it positive change to their communities and environment. In 2018, they identified five themes they would aim to address: Environment, Social, Health, Inclusivity and Youth. To address these through the platform, they have organised four awareness workshops and mini-conferences on issues related to antimicrobial resistance and sustainability issues, climate change and irresponsible manufacturing practices.
At the One Young World Summit in London, Ambassadors led a workshop on the threat of antimicrobial resistance with fellow pharmaceutical company GSK. In the Netherlands, the local team started to improve office sustainability inspired by One Young World Ambassadors taking action on plastic pollution, and launched the “No disposable coffee cups challenge”. This is slowly being adopted in other sites globally. So far they have avoided over 80,000 cups going to landfill/incineration and over 140,000 kg of CO2 emissions within a year. They also placed recycling containers on each floor to separate waste and to make people more conscious about what they produce daily in the office.
The Ambassadors run monthly board meetings with ‘regional champions’ to monitor the engagement and plan for upcoming activities. This group is just at the beginning of its journey as it seeks to build engagement in their activities and the frequency of their events to ensure their sustained positive impact.
The Activist Network
The Activist Network - United Kingdom
Sean Kellett, Iina Airaksinen
Business for Social Good
Sean and Iina credit the One Young World Summit in 2019 as the launchpad for their new initiative, The Activist Network. The aim of this project is to use the scale and reach of The Coca-Cola Company to make positive change on a scale not feasible as an individual.
A first step they took was to map the company’s social impact and focus to align with the SDGs, a ‘language’ they had not been using prior to the Summit. They identified SDG 10, 12 and 13 as the closest to their goals and values as a business in Western Europe. They explored the policies the company already had, and simultaneously identified areas they could push the business to go further on to drive change. From this research, the team proposed their vision for the company’s future and presented it to the senior leadership with the basic principle of making their company, Coca-Cola, the best it could be.
The Activist Network was announced at the company-wide conference at the beginning of 2020. It is open to anyone who works for The Coca-Cola Company in Western Europe and has a passion to drive change within the organisation. All are invited to identify the SDG they most align with, and from these they identify a core project they will dedicate their time to. They will then reconvene to discuss the impact and where they can take the initiative forward. This varies from internal projects to make the workplace more inclusive, to external initiatives to benefit the community they work in.
The group is aligned with the CEO’s purpose, and will monitor the impact which is accelerated through their network.
Dove Men+Care Paternity Leave Initiative
Dove Men+Care Paternity Leave Initiative - United States
Jordan Lewis
Business for Social Good
Jordan leads Dove Men+Care’s social mission to pass the national Paid Family Leave policy in the USA, where 85% of fathers do not have a single day of paid paternity leave. This entrenches workplace inequality and traditional gender roles.
In 2018, on Father’s Day in the USA, the company announced the its commitment to paid paternity leave. However, it was returning from the One Young World 2018 Summit in The Hague, galvanised by the words of other Ambassadors and Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever at the time, when Jordan was inspired to take a step further and combine brand marketing with a social movement. His own expertise lobbying for climate change solutions gave him the foundations to utilise the mechanism at Dove Men+Care’s disposal to change governmental legislation.
Since it launched the public mission in February 2019, over 40,000 people have joined the pledge. After Jordan led a day of action in Washington DC, the team met with 23 bipartisan members of Congress, have received coverage from every national news network, and moved the topic onto the national media agenda when a Congressman from Texas referenced the work in a public hearing since the House of Representatives.
In 2018 the group also championed the Unilever Paid Parental Leave Standard that gives over 81,000 global Unilever employees a minimum 3 weeks of paid family leave regardless of working status. More so, Jordan is at the forefront of this campaign with the potential to impact over 200 million working men and women.
DataJam Pasos Libres - Traffik Analysis Hub
DataJam Pasos Libres - Traffik Analysis Hub - Colombia [coordinating region]
Sebastián Arévalo Sánchez
Business for Social Good
With a partnership established through Sebastián Arévalo and Jesús Tabares, fellow Ambassadors at the One Young World Summit in Bogotá, Pasos Libres and IBM joined forces to run the Data Jam Pasos Libres in Colombia.
The DataJam Pasos Libres is a technological innovation competition that seeks to develop data-based solutions to identify human trafficking patterns, networks and hotspots. The event is characterized by bringing together young people, non-profit organizations, companies, governments and international cooperation interested in the use of technology and data to solve complex problems. The competition was born out of the success of the BlueHack Against Human Trafficking created in 2018 by Fundación Pasos Libres and IBM and supported by the One Young World, the British Embassy in Colombia and the Bogotá City Hall.
From DataJam, Pasos Libres has become the first Latin American partner of the Traffik Analysis Hub (TA Hub), a revolutionary partnership across industries and sectors including financial institutions, NGOs, law enforcement and government agencies, all unified by the common goal of sharing data to stop human trafficking. Now live and operational, using advanced cognitive technologies developed by IBM, the TA Hub partners gather information and share highly accessible analysis of human trafficking as part of their day-to-day business. Other TA Hub partners and founders include IBM, Stop the Traffik, Barclays, Interpol, Liberty Shared, Love Justice International and Western Union.
The new version of the DataJam Pasos Libres in 2020 will be a means to promote the TA Hub in Latin America and a source of solutions and data cases that can be incorporated into the Hub from a Latin American perspective. IBM has also committed to providing a Service Corps team to Pasos Libres in 2020, to be comprised of six IBM consultants and data scientists who will engage on the ground in support of the DataJam and output for projects to be implemented in South America.
Tespack
Together with Founder Mario Aguilera and Co-Founder Yesika A. Robles, Caritta co-founded Tespack, a social enterprise which aims to make people energy-independent by designing and developing unique mobile energy solutions by combining solar energy with power electronics and IoT. She attended the One Young World Summit in The Hague through the Audi Environmental Foundation Scholarship, a relationship which developed into an exciting collaboration to create social impact.
Audi Environmental Foundation and Tespack are launching a pilot project in Peru to provide environmental awareness on the topics of rainforest and deforestation. This is being run in collaboration with a Peruvian NGO, and the NGO workers require energy sources to operate in remote locations. As a result, Tespack is providing the front-line educators with renewable energy sources so they can operate in remote communities with no energy grid. This replicates the work of other successful projects using off-grid renewable energy sources in Ethiopia and Uganda as done in collaboration with Plan International.
Through this project, future initiatives, and the long-term partnership which they have established with the Audi Environmental Foundation and Plan International, Tespack has exponentially increased its capacity for social impact by facilitating the essential work of Plan International. The renewable and clean nature of the energy they provide also prevents the harmful consequences of alternative solutions.
Regeneration and Conservation of Native Ecosystems
Regeneration and Conservation of Native Ecosystems - Mexico
Carlos Ortiz
Business for Social Good
Carlos was a part of BRP’s 2018 delegation at One Young World The Hague. With a newfound appreciation for BRP’s connection to the environment, he established a partnership with a local NGO called Fundación Conciencia Biológica to support a conservation initiative in the Chihuahuan Desert outside Ciudad Juárez, one of two cities where BRP is based in Mexico. The project has 4 main goals: water retention; soil retention; biodiversity and conservation; storage and capture of CO2.
BRP provides the necessary equipment to support and monitor the conservation effort, including BRP’s own off-road vehicles. The initiaitve includes an assessment of vegetation density, identifying areas that require immediate attention, recording the endemic flora and fauna and calculating the CO2 stored.
This project is carried out in 20 visits to the area, the selection of six sample areas, and drone monitoring. Through protecting this region, the team are helping to preserve an area which stores 13,985 tonnes of CO2, 49 animal species, and 25 plant species. This goes some way to mitigating the organisation’s footprint in the region. The scientific research and practical results can also be used to improve environmental awareness and education in the area, so landowners will protect their own land. The NGO hopes this will have a multiplier effect.
BRP and Carlos’ model in Mexico is one which can be replicated worldwide, and serves as a benchmark for social impact action in the company.
Colombia Project - Commune 18
Colombia Project - Commune 18 - Colombia
Julián David Padilla
Business for Social Good
Julián left One Young World 2017 inspired but with no clear route of action. He connected with a project supporting the most vulnerable communities in District 18 in Cali. The forced migration of rural communities as a result of the civil war has resulted in many being underserved by social services such as healthcare and education.
In the last few years, with the support of RB, the project has provided five protective spaces for over 5,000 children, providing nursery spaces, education services and new opportunities to grow and live in peace. It has impacted over 400 families with a social programme to help the community to better support itself. A further 20 women have been provided with leadership training. These initiatives contribute to the long-term sustainability of the project so it is not indefinitely reliant on support from volunteers and RB.
The next phase is for Julián and RB is to leverage the company’s expertise to address clean water issues and sanitation in the community, and replicate this model in more and more communities around Colombia.
This new stage is transforming cultural hygiene practices linked with Lysol and Sanpic brands impacting more than 560 families and around 3.800 people in this same district through social and environmental education programmes which will allow people to have healthier lives and happier homes.
This is a new era of the project. RB is now restoring the communities eco-socially allowing them to have a new way of living. Eco-restoration will reduce the environmental impact on the Melendez river which is one of the main hydric sources of Cali, Valle del Cauca. Social-restoration will transform hygiene practices by changing the waste management habits.
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.