Educational and Culture Projects in the Community

According to ISO 26000 education and culture are foundations for social and economic development and part of community identity and efforts by organizations to preserve and promote culture and promote education are compatible with respect for human rights and important positive contributors to social cohesion and development.[1]  Among the sustainable development goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are the aspirations to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, promote lifelong learning opportunities for all and empower all women and girls.[2]  The Future-Fit Business Framework identified inadequate access for a large proportion of the global population to basic education as being among the critical environmental and social issues for businesses and society as a whole, arguing that the problem has led to a skills gap, poor nutrition and health, and less chance for families to escape from poverty and lead fulfilling lives.

Education and culture are two of the most common areas of interest for local community engagement and investment activities and businesses have acted in a number of different ways to support local schools and cultural programs.  In fact, one of the two most frequently covered topics in the reports analyzed for the GRI Community Impact Reporting Survey (along with philanthropy and charitable giving) was education and training, which appeared in 63% of the reports.  The topic was described as including initiatives aiming at providing support (in kind, cash, human resources) to education systems and/or transferring knowledge to the community.[3]  ISO 26000 recommends that organizations should[4]:

• Promote and support education at all levels, and engage in actions to improve the quality of and access to education, promote local knowledge and help eradicate illiteracy
• In particular, promote learning opportunities for vulnerable or discriminated groups
• Encourage the enrollment of children in formal education and contribute to the elimination of barriers to children obtaining an education (e.g., child labor)
• Promote cultural activities where appropriate, recognize and value the local cultures and cultural traditions, consistent with the principle of respect for human rights
• Place special emphasis on actions to support cultural activities that empower historically disadvantaged groups as a means of combating discrimination
• Consider facilitating human rights education and awareness raising
• Help conserve and protect cultural heritage, especially where the organization’s activities have an impact on it
• Where appropriate, promote the use of traditional knowledge and technologies of indigenous communities

The STAR Community Rating System framework, while not specifically directed at private sector organizations, can be used by such organizations to plan their community involvement and development strategies and measure the impact of their actions.  While preempted by the current version of the framework, the original sustainability goals and guiding principles released by STAR in October 2010 also provide a reference point for businesses looking to identify community-related goals over a variety of sectors.  For example, sustainability goals falling under education, arts and the community in the original version of the STAR framework included the following[5]:

• Educational Opportunities: Engage all people, from birth through adulthood, with access to high quality public education
• Educational Environments: Design, manage and operate high-quality facilities and learning settings, accessible to all students and community members that appropriately serve their target community, create safe and lasting connections to the community at large, and expand assets for historically underserved communities
• School-Community Engagement: Drive successful education inside and outside the classroom by building a strong school-community learning partnership and mutual ownership of educational success
• Ecological Literacy: Provide residents with the informational and material resources they need to think critically about and address environmental problems and solutions, and include the environment as an important consideration in their work and daily living
• Arts and Culture: Engage all audiences with a diverse offering of arts and cultural opportunities and allow for regular participation and creative self-expression; use these resources as platforms to address social, environmental, educational and economic development issues in the community
• Arts and Cultural Civic Support: Establish civic leadership and support in cultivating a broad range of arts, cultural and heritage resources and activities
• Social and Cultural Diversity: Celebrate and respect diversity and sensitively utilize the diverse perspectives and traditions embodied in the social, cultural and economic diversity of a community’s residents
• Neighborhood Vitality: Support the function and identity of neighborhoods by encouraging communication, strengthening community bonds, local participation and interaction, and enhancing sense of place
• Civic Literacy and Engagement: Encourage communication and promote meaningful participation in civic life within and among neighborhoods and the larger community; create civic participation that is accessible to all, with barriers to full participation eliminated
• Financial Literacy: Empower citizens to make informed choices about the risks and benefits of financial decisions by enhancing understanding of financial concepts and products

In some cases businesses get involved in local programs to ensure that more children have access to education and/or reduce the number of school days lost due to the inability of children to get to the schools. Another dimension of education in local communities is improving the quality of the curriculum and the way in which is delivered and organizations may decide to funnel their resources toward professional development for teachers to provide them with the support to learn and implement innovative teaching methods that will improve their job satisfaction and outcomes in the classroom.  Teacher development is particularly important for teachers involved in educating children in the earliest years as they are working on the basic literacy skills that will serve as the foundation for lifelong learning.  Objective measures of performance and impact in this area include the number of teachers placed in development programs and the number of students those teachers worked with at their schools.  The value of the teacher development programs can be enhanced by supporting outreach initiatives in the community to inform parents and other family members about the classroom activities and elicit their participation in encouraging the children.

The reports analyzed for the GRI Community Impact Reporting Survey indicated that companies reported on a fairly robust set of performance indicators with respect to education and training including the following (the top three being the indicators most commonly found):

• Number of people benefited or reached by the educational activities
• Sum of money invested or raised for the education initiative
• Number of educational activities (e.g. seminars, classes, conferences, etc.) held
• Number of scholarships granted
• Number of items (e.g. backpacks, computers, books etc.) donated
• Number of educational facilities (e.g. schools) built
• Number of branches or employees who participated in educational activities
• Percentage of the population (e.g. students, teachers) benefited
• Number of jobs provided for students

Reporting on education and training also included several impact indicators such as improvement of mathematics performance of learners, percentage rise of general school graduates get apprenticeship, percentage decrease of number of accidents and percentage of youth members continue to involve in volunteer projects.  It should be noted that several of the performance indicators listed above, such as number of people benefited or reached by educational activities, are arguably focused on impact; however, companies generally did not attempt to measure and describe intensity of benefits from programs.

Culture was separated out as a reporting topic for purposes of the GRI Community Impact Reporting Survey and was covered in 36% of the reports, making it the seventh most popular of the 17 topics.  The topic, actually named “culture and leisure”, was described as including reporting on initiatives aiming at promoting culture (such as music, opera), sports and other leisure activities in the community.[6]  The performance indicators that companies reported on with respect to culture and leisure included the number of people/groups benefited or participated in activities; the sum of money spent on culture and leisure initiatives; and the number of exhibitions/performances/activities staged.  Notably, however, the reporting companies generally failed to identify and report on any impacts from their culture and leisure initiatives.

This article is part of the Sustainable Entrepreneurship Project’s extensive materials on Community Engagement and Investment and an excerpt from Community Engagement and Investment: A Guide for Sustainable Entrepreneurs by Alan S. Gutterman, which is available for purchase at various online booksellers.  Readers may also enjoy the author’s Responsible Business: A Guide to Corporate Social Responsibility for Sustainable Entrepreneurs.

[1] International Organization for Standardization, ISO 26000: Guidance on Social Responsibility (Geneva, 2010), 64.

[2] http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ 

[3] Reporting on Community Impacts: A survey conducted by the Global Reporting Initiative, the University of Hong Kong and CSR Asia (Amsterdam: Stichting Global Reporting Initiative, 2008), 29 and 33.

[4] International Organization for Standardization, ISO 26000: Guidance on Social Responsibility (Geneva, 2010), 64-65.

[5] STAR Community Index: Sustainability Goals and Guiding Principles (ICLEI and Local Governments for Sustainability, October 2010), 18.

[6] Reporting on Community Impacts: A survey conducted by the Global Reporting Initiative, the University of Hong Kong and CSR Asia (Amsterdam: Stichting Global Reporting Initiative, 2008), 29 and 33.