Society

Equality, Inclusion and Human Potential

Multistakeholder coalitions and alliances

Programmes to establish national public-private collaborations to enhance lifelong learning, increase the future readiness and employability of workforces, create innovative skills funding models and set up mechanisms for skills anticipation and job market insight.

Building on the Forum’s Future of Jobs report, the initiative is a platform for action, offering playbooks and a global learning network among countries.

Accelerators are active in India, Oman, Argentina, South Africa, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, each involving multiple relevant ministries and 100 of the largest employers in each country, including World Economic Forum Members and their subsidiaries. The initiative will engage 15 pioneer economies and five champion countries by the end of 2020 and is expected to equip more than 100 million people with future-ready skills.

Additionally, the knowledge is codified and exchanged dynamically through the Accelerators network and disseminated widely through the Forum’s Platform for the New Economy and Society to create a lasting global movement for systems change on reskilling and upskilling.

Task forces to bring together business, governments, trade unions and the education sector to drive coordinated action on workforce transformations through intra- and cross-industry collaboration.

Building on the Forum’s Reskilling Revolution report, the initiative supports each industry in understanding key skills, tasks and jobs changes and helps develop common upskilling, reskilling and redeployment initiatives, working closely with a consortium of training providers.

Eight pilot industry task forces (Advanced Manufacturing; Aerospace; Aviation, Travel and Tourism; Consumer; Financial Services; Media, Entertainment and Information; Mining and Metals; Oil and Gas) have been set up to date. These include Members and Strategic Partners of the World Economic Forum, and International Business Council members. The initiative will engage 15 industries by the end of 2020 and is expected to equip more than 25 million people with future-ready skills.

Additionally, the knowledge is codified through a playbook, exchanged dynamically through the Accelerators network and disseminated widely through the Forum’s Platform for the New Economy and Society to create a global lasting movement for change within and across industries.

A network of leading gig-economy companies defining online gig work and co-creating new standards for digital on-demand platform work with platform companies, policy-makers and workers’ representatives.

Involving companies such as Cabify, Careem, Deliveroo, Grab, Postmates, TaskRabbit, Uber and Upwork and established staffing firms such as Adecco and Manpower, in 2020 the initiative will work on the widespread dissemination of the new standards.

Country-specific programmes that establish national public-private collaborations to help close gender gaps in labour force participation, remuneration, leadership and future skills-readiness.

Building on the Forum’s Global Gender Gap report, the initiative offers playbooks and a global learning network among countries. Accelerators are active in Chile, Argentina, Panama, Peru, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, France and Egypt, involving multiple relevant ministries and 100 of the largest employers in each country including World Economic Forum Members and their subsidiaries.

The initiative will engage 15 pioneer economies and five champion countries by the end of 2020 and is expected to improve economic opportunity for 25 million women.

Additionally, the knowledge is codified and exchanged dynamically through the Accelerators network and disseminated widely through the Forum’s Platform for the New Economy and Society to create a lasting global movement for systems change to close economic gender gaps.

A strategic network that uses the current flux in labour markets to build parity into the new and evolving work roles of the future.

While many efforts have focused on the supply of future skills for girls and women, there have been few demand-side efforts to create incentives for women and girls to enter STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and other high-growth areas.

50 pioneering companies from the Forum’s Members and Partners will commit to hardwiring gender parity into emerging jobs that are strategic for their future growth with a rapid two-year timeline, starting in March 2020.

Supply- and demand-side initiatives are connected through the Forum’s Platform for the New Economy and Society to rapidly scale up change in education systems and workforces.

A global movement that puts disability on the business leadership agenda; it aims to engage 500 national and multinational private-sector corporations to establish the tipping point for change and to unlock the business, social and economic value of the 1.3 billion people living with disabilities globally.

The initiative was launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 and expects to have more than 200 companies committed by the 2020 meeting.

A coalition of organizations that leverages individual and collective advocacy to accelerate LGBTI equality and inclusion globally to drive positive change.

The coalition operationalizes the UN Standards of Conduct to support business in tackling discrimination against LGBTI people. The initiative was launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 with seven founding Forum Partner companies.

It encourages other companies to commit to the UN Standards and facilitates the exchange of best practices.

A multistakeholder group with recommendations for a universal shift towards a human-centred future of work. Hosted by the International Labour Organization and co-chaired by South Africa and Sweden, with participation from the World Economic Forum.

The recommendations include:

A global multistakeholder partnership working to prepare young people for productive and engaged citizenship; hosted by UNICEF.

Generation Unlimited connects secondary education and training to employment and entrepreneurship, empowering every young person to thrive in the world of work. The Forum is a member of the Global Advisory Board and will be partnering with the initiative through its Education 4.0 work on content and scaling up action through the Closing the Skills Gap country accelerator model.

An alliance of companies with the common ambition to help 6 million young people build employability skills for the future, with a focus on digital skills, STEM, soft skills and dual education by 2022.

The Global Alliance for Youth (the Alliance) emerged out of the Needs YOUth initiative. The Needs YOUth initiative was launched in 2013 when Nestlé started offering job and on-the- job training opportunities, readiness for work activities and advocating duel education programmes as a response to youth unemployment in Europe, which was at a critical level.

In 2017, the Nestlé Needs YOUth initiative was launched globally and was expanded to cover the entire value chain, including two new focus areas:
- Agripreneurship (working with young farmers to help them obtain the skills needed to survive in the agricultural business context of today and tomorrow)
- Entrepreneurship (helping develop the business skills of young people around the world through programmes such as My Own Business, a scheme that encourages women in Central and West Africa to achieve financial independence).

The ambition is to help 10 million young people access economic opportunities by 2030. Nestlé launched the Alliance at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019, engaging private-sector partners to join forces and tackle the youth unemployment issue.

The Alliance now groups 22 like-minded international companies (ABB, Adecco Group, BBVA, British Telecom, Cargill, CEMEX, Engie, EY, Facebook, Firmenich, MasterCard, Mercer, Microsoft, Nestlé, Nielsen, Publicis Groupe, SAP, Sodexo, Starbucks, Rockwell Automation, Vodafone and White & Case) and collaborates with non-private-sector partners such as the World Bank-led S4YE (Solutions for Youth Employment) and the GAN (Global Apprentice Network).

A multistakeholder platform for industry, philanthropy, government and academia to take action and engage with civil society in the development, deployment, use and governance of technology.

The initiative focuses on three areas to identify, pilot and scale up new partnership models for engaging non-profits on technology governance and public- and private-sector value. The agenda includes the design of participatory and inclusive approaches; collaboration on evidence-gathering on the new risks posed by technology; and investing in local communities.

Each of its seven global task forces creates playbooks and prototypes for collective action on technology and methods for companies, donors and governments to engage with the diversity of people, communities and organizations in civil society. A global expert network of civil society champions can partner with companies, donors and governments to understand and design for the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on marginalized populations.

The initiative was launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 and expects to engage 250 Forum Members and Partners and five champion countries by the end of 2021. The findings will be codified and exchanged through the network of task forces and integrated into the related Forum platforms (in particular, the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network) to accelerate greater civil society involvement and participation in shaping a people-centred Fourth Industrial Revolution.

A global platform to help build a market for investing in ways that benefit people and communities in states of fragility or displacement, while also generating a financial return.

The initiative facilitates multistakeholder partnerships to develop pipelines of investable projects as well as financial structures and funds to support those projects. It is co-chaired by the World Economic Forum, World Bank Group and International Committee of the Red Cross and supported by Boston Consulting Group. It applies to institutional investors, asset managers, humanitarian-development organizations, development finance institutions, development banks, governments and others.

It is guided by a High-Level Group that includes more than 20 leading organizations, such as Credit Suisse, MasterCard, Gulf International Bank, Novo Nordisk Foundation, GSG, the UN Refugee Agency, World Food Programme, USAID and the UK’s Department for International Development, as well as the Netherlands.

The Initiative has begun developing the market in industries ranging from energy to agriculture to financial services, and regions from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to developing project pipelines and funding mechanisms, the Initiative is building ecosystem-wide capabilities to continue growing the market, for example through the planned launch of an interactive ecosystem map and resources to improve organizational readiness of stakeholders in the space.

A global platform that advances a paradigm for sustainable social innovation as a proven alternative to traditional business models

The Schwab Foundation is supported by the Mostepe Foundation and the Frey Foundation. Over the past 20 years, it has curated a community of 350 late-stage social entrepreneurs, enabling partnerships with many Forum Industry Partner companies and governments to reach hundreds of millions of people in more than 70 countries. Recently, the Schwab Foundation has begun highlighting leading social intrapreneurs in the public and private sectors.

One example is d.light, a pioneer and market leader in off-grid solar solutions for families without access to reliable electricity. Its product line ranges from $4 solar lanterns to solar home system solutions that are financed with pay-as-you-go technology. To date, d.light has enabled more than 100 million people to upgrade from kerosene lamps to d.light solar solutions, primarily in Africa and Asia, offsetting the equivalent of over 20 million tonnes of CO2 and saving customers billions of dollars in energy-related expenses, while creating a safer and healthier home-lighting alternative for households.

Another example is Javara, the forefront promoter of Indonesia’s food biodiversity heritage. Javara brings indigenous food products from remote Indonesia to the broader market through working closely with over 52,000 smallholder farmers and food artisans. The company sells more than 800 artisanal products (of which 250 are certified organic), serving over 700 businesses (retail outlets and the food service industry) in Indonesia and exports to 22 countries.

A public-private global health partnership committed to saving children’s lives and protecting people’s health by increasing access to immunization in poor countries.

Towards the end of the 20th century, global immunization efforts were beginning to plateau. Despite the promising progress of the previous two decades by the Expanded Programme on Immunization, there were still 30 million children living in poor countries who were not fully immunized. Coverage was stagnating and, in some places, even declining. And even though new life-saving vaccines were becoming available, beyond the original six basic vaccines already in most immunization programmes, virtually none were reaching children in developing countries because they were too expensive. What was needed was an entirely new model for public-private collaboration.

With the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledging $750 million over five years, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization – what was to become Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance – was launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2000. A unique public-private partnership, Gavi was created to bring together all key stakeholders. This included UN agencies, governments, vaccine manufacturers, private sector and civil society. All were committed to improving childhood immunization coverage in poor countries and to accelerating access to new vaccines.

The Forum was instrumental in bringing those stakeholders to the same table to then foster a common agenda and create the alignment. A totally new business model for vaccine access was created to leverage not just financial resources but also expertise to help make vaccines more affordable, more available, their provision more sustainable and vaccine demand more predictable. As a rule, each country co-finances the purchase of the vaccines. As its economy grows, it starts financing more of the cost of each vaccine until the country entirely self-finances its immunization programmes, moving out of Gavi support.

The co-financing scheme became a key feature of this first-of-a-kind 21st-century public-private partnership model. It was later replicated for other health and development interventions, such as the Global Fund established in 2002. As Gavi celebrates its 20th anniversary in Davos this year, this model has prevailed, helping vaccinate more than 760 million children and preventing more than 13 million future deaths along the journey.

A fund created in 2002 to raise, manage and invest the world’s money into the effort to defeat three of the deadliest infectious diseases ever known.

The idea for the Global Fund arose from a wellspring of grass-roots political advocacy coming face-to-face with the imperatives of global leadership. AIDS, TB and malaria are all preventable and treatable – but solving this problem requires the commitment not only of world leaders and decision-makers but also of those working on the ground to help the men, women and children living with these diseases.

“When I first mooted the idea of the Global Fund, people said I was dreaming … I love dreams. It always starts with a dream,” said the late Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The idea for a Global Fund was discussed at a G8 summit in Okinawa, Japan, in 2000. The real commitment began to coalesce at the African Union summit in April 2001, continued at the UN General Assembly Special Session in June of that year; and it was finally endorsed by the G8 at their summit in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001.

A Transitional Working Group was established to determine the principles and working modalities of the new organization, and the Global Fund came into being when it was officially launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2002. In the years up to 2018, health programmes supported by the Global Fund partnership saved 32 million lives. Overall, the number of deaths caused by AIDS, TB and malaria each year has been reduced by 40% since 2002 in countries where the Global Fund invests.

A coalition that helps shorten the response time to epidemics by advancing vaccines that can be released quickly once an outbreak occurs.

By financing and undertaking the research before a crisis erupts, CEPI dramatically speeds up the ability to counter the spread of an infectious disease such as Ebola. CEPI was conceived by public and private-industry partners representing global vaccine manufacturers who met at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016 in response to the ramifications of the Ebola virus outbreak in West and Central Africa. $460 million in initial funding was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Governments of Germany, Japan and Norway, and further commitments were made to create a total of $800 million. With the advance work that CEPI undertook, prepared vaccines could go straight to phase-three trials and get regulatory approval faster.

To date, CEPI has committed to investing more than $456 million in vaccine development. This includes 19 vaccine candidates against priority pathogens (six against Lassa virus, five against MERS-CoV, four against Nipah virus, two against Chikungunya, two against Rift Valley fever) and three vaccine platforms to develop vaccines against Disease X (unexpected diseases). To assess the effectiveness of these platforms, seven additional vaccine candidates are being developed (two against influenza, one against Marburg virus, two against rabies virus, one against respiratory syncytial virus, and one against yellow fever).

A sustainable, shared, accessible and integrated data innovation ecosystem to reduce the impact of disease outbreaks through forecasting and predictive analytics.

Led by the World Health Organization in partnership with the Forum, EPI-BRAIN is a multistakeholder initiative, announced in January 2019 during the 144th session of the World Health Organization Executive Board and at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019.

Contagious disease outbreaks are inevitable. However, it is possible – if we act collectively – to leverage the potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to mitigate the impact of outbreaks by harnessing AI and epidemic intelligence to predict and forecast epidemics.

There are promising examples where public and private data and data insights have improved epidemic readiness, but innovation has typically been ad hoc and initiated only for individual outbreaks, making such studies siloed, short-live, and under-integrated.

Investments in data innovation have not been commensurate with the potential opportunity, nor to the growing threat that epidemics pose to lives and livelihoods. Additionally, most developing countries still do not have access to contemporary analytical approaches. Consequently, the circumstances around predicting and forecasting epidemics are analogous to the early days of weather forecasting. EPI-BRAIN seeks to rectify this.

A shared vision to provide entrepreneurship training to 1,000 displaced people by 2021 to help the Kakuma Refugee Camp realize its economic potential

The Forum of Young Global Leaders (YGL) have partnered with UNHCR, University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre, Aliko Dangote Foundation and Danish Church Aid (DCA)-Kenya to design and implement a three-month executive leadership educational programme in Kakuma Refugee Camp.

In a remote area of Kenya, the Kakuma Refugee Camp has a population of more than 190,000 people. According to a recent International Finance Corporation report, Kakuma is a $56 million economy with an estimated 2,700 registered businesses. In fact, Kakuma hosts over 30% of all businesses in the local municipal area of Turkana County in Kenya. Many refugees in this camp have skills that they could use to support themselves and their families. However, a lack of documentation and access to capital means many families cannot realize their entrepreneurial ambitions.

The programme initially targets 30 young men and women, a class of both refugees and members of the local host community, who have the potential to lead and contribute to improving the well-being of people in the area. After joining the training programme in Kakuma, participants received certificates from the University of Oxford and have embarked on a virtual mentorship programme that pairs them with YGLs around the world.

The mentorship curriculum was developed by YGLs and is hosted on iamtheCODE, a YGL-founded initiative that mobilizes governments, businesses and investors to support young women in science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics, entrepreneurship and design. The aim is to enable those leaders to emerge and mentor the next cohort of leaders. The extension of this programme is underway.

A thought and action platform that seeks to eradicate harmful gender-based stereotypes in all media and advertising content

Hosted by UN Women, the global champion for gender equality, the Unstereotype Alliance seeks to use the advertising industry as a force for good to drive positive change in gender perceptions. Businesses and organizations that have been champions in addressing gender bias in the industry have embraced the mission to tackle how the industry can reflect realistic, non-biased portrayals of women and men. Several Forum Partners have joined, including Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Google, Microsoft and Publicis Groupe.

An initiative to set the agenda for chief executive officers, ministers and other stakeholders to co-create innovative education systems that deliver on children’s needs for the future.

To date, the initiative has convened policy-makers, business leaders, education experts and EdTech pioneers to create a global framework for shifting the content of learning and the mechanisms by which it is delivered to meet the needs of the future, and has launched a global crowdsourcing campaign to identify the schools of the future.

In 2020, the initiative will release the new learning framework, reveal the schools of the future, develop a model for reskilling and upskilling the teaching workforce and highlight new policy pathways to enable Education 4.0. The initiative will be led by a coalition 25 chief executive officers, who are education champions, and 25 education ministers.

Company leadership in corporate global citizenship

A $3 billion investment focused on internal and external initiatives to prepare for the future of work.

PwC’s New world. New skills. initiative is a $3 billion programme to prepare for the future of work. One of the most pressing problems facing our world is rapidly growing skills mismatches. The technological revolution is transforming many aspects of life as we know it. This brings with it many benefits for society but also some unintended consequences, such as the obsolescence or disruption of jobs and businesses, and an increased disparity between those with technological skills and those without. While business has an important role to play, there is an urgent need for organizations, governments, educators and citizens to come together with business to address the many implications for society.

Building on its work upskilling each of its 275,000+ people around the world to ensure they are prepared for the digital world, PwC is convening a much broader group of stakeholders to address the future of work and its many implications. Crucially, PwC is doing this through its client and community work, and by convening a much broader group, including governments and other institutions as they address the skills agenda. This three-pronged approach is crucial to ensuring upskilling at scale.

PwC is expanding its work with disadvantaged communities to enhance their skills and capabilities, in line with their needs at a local level. This includes working with students and teachers to provide the training needed that may not be in the education system today. PwC has a number of flagship programmes including Access Your Potential and TechSheCan, on which it will be building.

Efforts include workforce development and reskilling, a dedicated hiring programme to target low- and moderate-income candidates, and a comprehensive reporting system for human capital management.

The Academy is an award-winning training, coaching and development organization dedicated to the success of employees in Consumer & Small Business, Merrill and the Private Bank at Bank of America.

The Academy’s purpose is to attract and retain talented individuals, develop the skills needed to be more productive, meet the diverse needs of clients and help grow careers. It partners within the company with the Talent Acquisition and Learning and Leadership Development teams for managed, end-to-end employee development, promoting more effective onboarding, training and coaching of employees for careers now and in the future.

The Pathways Program is a hiring and development programme that includes partnerships with workforce development non-profits in cities with concentrated hiring needs. It is designed to execute targeted recruitment events, create direct referral pipelines and focus on career progression.

This programme is made possible through the collaboration of teams in Talent Acquisition; Environmental, Social and Governance; and the Academy. It provides a strategy that benefits teammates, communities, non-profit partners and Bank of America itself.

Pathways is partnering with some longstanding local and national non-profit partners, such as Dress for Success, Goodwill, National Urban League, UnidosUS and Year Up, helping to reach a goal of hiring 10,000 individuals from low- to moderate-income communities by 2022.

The Bank of America Human Capital Management Report provides significant stakeholder transparency on compensation, benefits, diversity data, and other important datasets and is among the first of its kind.

Several initiatives aimed at helping communities around the world adopt digital tools and learn relevant skills that can help them thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Mastercard’s Lab for Financial Inclusion and its Centre for Inclusive Growth have created several initiatives aimed at helping communities around the world adopt digital tools and learn relevant skills that can help them thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Through its various initiatives, Mastercard is providing 275,000 smallholder farmers with digital platforms to make it easier to price and sell their crops, creating a more productive and mutually beneficial agricultural supply chain in Uganda, India, Mexico and Tanzania.

They are also equipping over 18,000 shopkeepers in Kenya with digital credit and accounts to grow their businesses, as well as training more than 5,000 of them in financial and credit management. Through these various initiatives, Mastercard is on the cusp of reaching their goal to financially include more than 500 million people by 2020.

Ambitious internal and external targets include eliminating the gender pay gap, having a minimum 40% female participation on its board and financially empowering 10 million people around the world, while funding 200,000 new scholarships, internships and entrepreneur programmes.

The bank provided financial education to over 360,000 people globally and supported over 270,000 micro-entrepreneurs in Latin America in 2018 alone, with innovative programmes such as that of Prospera in Brazil, which integrates digital tools in the microfinancing operations of the bank and significantly enhances the quality and reach of its operations.

A global initiative leading the way forward on one of the most pressing issues of our time – global income inequality

Right now, millions of people are being left behind with no access to the education and skills to succeed in the world of tomorrow. With that in mind, Deloitte professionals are collaborating with stakeholders across business, government and civil society to prepare 50 million lives for a world of opportunity by 2030.

In India, the initiative works to improve access to quality education and skills training for girls and women. In the US, it provides support and guidance to help low-income high school students get (and stay) on track to college. In the UK, it is helping to bridge the digital skills gap. In Japan, it is leveraging its skills and resources to rebuild a city, workforce and industry. And, in Papua New Guinea, it is taking steps to reverse the country’s significant rate of illiteracy. To date, WorldClass has reached 4.7 million people.

A global experience and technology ecosystem to create more inclusive societies that empower and equip people with the right skills, and an investment of over $200 million to support Accenture’s vision to improve the way the world works and lives.

The company’s corporate citizenship initiative Skills to Succeed has equipped nearly 3 million people with the skills to get a job or build a business; and Accenture Development Partnerships has completed more than 1,600 projects in 90 countries to help the international development community solve challenges in global healthcare, education, financial inclusion and energy access. Tech4Good projects use advanced technologies to help solve critical challenges facing business and society.

Additionally, in 2017, Accenture co-founded the Chicago Apprenticeship Network – partnering with local employers to jumpstart their professional apprenticeship programmes. Learning from the best of the company’s well-established Swiss and German apprenticeship practices, Accenture expects to have trained a total of 450 apprentices in 20 US cities by 2020, proving that apprenticeships can be scaled up – and, in turn, can narrow the skills gap, close the digital divide by expanding opportunities to grow and contribute, and fill its talent pipeline with diverse skills to fuel innovation.

An initiative to enable access to meaningful and sustainable jobs in in-demand careers through accelerated learning programmes, on-the-job training, certification and experience.

By partnering with universities and educational institutions around the world, the MyPath programme provides opportunities for talent to upskill while they work, improving learnability and employability.

In the US, Manpower Group has committed to upskilling 130,000 workers over the next five years and to offering best-in-class online General Education Diploma (GED®) preparation courses, unlimited practice tests and personal coaching support from application through to graduation for 30,000 workers, enabling them to earn their high school equivalency diploma within weeks.

In France, 1.8 million hours of training were completed in 2018. More than 500 professionals were trained and 25,000 training hours completed through the Experis Tech Academy in Italy in 2019. In Manpower Belgium, more than 1,500 workers are trained annually through the Logistics Academy, which has been running since 2007.

A partnership between Barclays and the Unreasonable Group to co-create the world’s first international network of accelerators focused on scaling up entrepreneurial businesses that will help employ thousands worldwide, while solving some of the most pressing societal and environmental challenges of our time.

With advice and guidance from a community of world-class mentors and industry specialists, the programme has so far supported 124 growth-stage ventures that have had a positive impact on the lives of more than 187 million people, reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 28.8 million tons, and generated more than 20,000 net new jobs in three years. The companies have also raised $2 billion in funding.

The project brings insurance to over 200,000 women entrepreneurs and their small businesses in Egypt, enabling them to become more financially resilient.

Supported by Women’s World Banking and with insurance and reinsurance support provided from AXA Egypt and Swiss Re, fast pay-outs build trust in the new financial safety net on offer, and women’s families are also included in the protection.

With a desire to help more women entrepreneurs become financially resilient through schemes like this, a huge protection gap remains, however, in health insurance for women entrepreneurs across many emerging economies, such as Egypt. Consequently, Swiss Re and the project partners see great potential for scaling up this initiative to take on board health insurance and other aspects.

A commitment to fostering an environment that enables women to thrive and challenge the status quo, launching a bold set of initiatives both inside and outside its workplace in support of women’s equality.

Visa has long been committed to the advancement of Sustainable Development Goal 5 – Achieve Gender Equality and Empower all Women and Girls. The company’s priorities are to bring more women into the formal financial system. This year, Visa met the goal of bringing 500 million individuals into the formal financial system by 2020 through Visa-branded accounts: 54% of these first-time account holders are women.

Visa is also committed to eliminating the $1.5 trillion gap in financing for women entrepreneurs through support from the business and the Visa Foundation. The World Bank reports a $300 billion annual credit deficit for formal-sector, women-owned small and medium-sized businesses. Without capital, it is nearly impossible to start and sustain a business.

Through a $20 million grant to Women’s World Banking, the Visa Foundation is supporting a five-year programme to help 1.5 million women-owned micro and small businesses (MSBs) grow their assets by 20% and create financial access for 10 million women globally (rising to an expected 1 million at the end of 2020).

The Visa Foundation is supporting a partnership with USAID and the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) Gender Equality Initiative. The Advancing Women’s Empowerment Fund will provide over $1 million in funding, which will be distributed to support organizations in the South and South-East Asia region to test strategies to increase access to capital for women.

A foundation established in 2015 to expand computer science and maker education to K-12 students and teachers across the US, especially among under-represented communities.

The Foundation conducts professional development programmes for teachers and partners with leading non-profits, academic institutions, educators and experts to run innovative campaigns to raise awareness on bridging the digital divide. This investment is crucial given projections that, by 2030, there will be more than 85 million unfilled jobs in the US due to the technology skills gap.

As of October 2018, Infosys Foundation USA’s impact has reached 13,763 teachers, 4,740,146 students and 21,814 schools across all 50 states.

A pioneering education reform initiative created by IBM, to equip young people with the academic, technical and professional skills required for 21st-century jobs and ongoing education.

P-TECH represents the best of what public-private partnerships can look like, with students taking high school and college coursework simultaneously and engaging in industry-guided workforce development. A new model of public education, it helps close the gap between young people’s ambitions for college and careers and the specific skills needed by employers in high-growth industries.

P-TECH schools span grades 9-14 and enable students to earn both a high-school diploma and a no-cost, two-year postsecondary degree in a STEM field. Students participate in a range of workplace experiences, including mentorship, worksite visits and paid internships. Upon graduation, students have the academic and professional skills required to either continue their education in a four-year post-secondary institution or begin entry-level careers in IT, healthcare, advanced manufacturing and other competitive fields.

While the P-TECH Model spans six years, students are able to move at their own pace, enabling some to accelerate through the model in as little as four years. P-TECH serves students from primarily underserved backgrounds, with no testing or grade requirements.

P-TECH has now grown to more than 220 schools across 11 US states and 24 countries. More than 600 large and small companies are partnering with schools across a wide range of sectors, including health IT, advanced manufacturing and energy technology.

A corporate global citizenship initiative to help students aged 7 to 16, with their teachers, guardians and parents, to become more cyber aware through interactive classroom sessions on the safe use of personal data, social media, cyber-bullying, online gaming and smartphones.

In 2019 the initiative reached a record 127,000 students through more than 870 classroom discussions in schools held in 51 countries. In 2018, it reached 80,000 students in 45 countries and, in its first year (2017), it achieved a Guinness World Record for conducting the largest computer security lesson at multiple locations at the same time.

KPMG works with local governing bodies and educational institutions to help reach and provide training that may not be in the education system today, arming young people with knowledge on how they can stay safe online and make the right choices in the digitally enabled world to help make local communities safer.

A programme to help 50 million children lead healthier lives by 2030.

As the triple burden of malnutrition continues to affect millions of children, the programme is organized around two main areas of action: improving the nutritional profile of manufactured foods and beverages; and helping parents and caregivers through nutritional awareness and knowledge-building.

Devised in close collaboration with local authorities, its worldwide school module helps teachers educate 13 million children annually on good nutrition and lifestyle habits. In partnership with retailers, it also delivers in-store portion guidance and healthy recipes, while helping to improve access to fresh vegetables and fruits.

In 2018, combined actions contributed to help more than 29 million children across 86 countries. The programme also raises awareness through digital media on the importance of involving children in food preparation, reaching close to 300 million parents every year.

A programme to reach vulnerable girls with essential puberty and confidence education and to donate sanitary pads, so that girls can commit to their education and their future.

Around the world, the onset of puberty marks a low point in girls’ confidence. In many African communities, stigma and taboos about menstruation mean that many girls do not have information about puberty and are often unprepared when they have their first period. In addition, girls who grow up in poverty often cannot afford sanitary pads, which means that they do not fully participate in school, sports or social life when they have their period.

All these issues can lead to increased school absenteeism and, for some girls, dropping out altogether.

For example, in South Africa, Always partners with the Department of Education and The Footprints Foundation to ensure that girls stay in school in more than 100 schools where female absenteeism is alarmingly high. They achieve this through puberty education, motivational talks and mentoring.

In South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, Always has reached more than 200,000 girls and donated over 13 million sanitary pads since 2008. As the company behind Always, P&G has committed to providing puberty education to 23 million girls across Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa over the next three years.

An alliance to mobilize up to $50 million in capital to improve maternal health in regions of the world where many women die from the complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

The Alliance was formed by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Merck and Co.’s Merck for Mothers, Credit Suisse, and USAID’s Center for Innovation and Impact to provide financing and maternal health expertise to stimulate, advance and scale up innovations that contribute to a healthy pregnancy and safe childbirth.

The Alliance will invest in local enterprises to achieve positive impact on maternal health outcomes by improving health infrastructure, service delivery, training for health providers and women’s access to care. Its goal is to improve maternal health in high-need regions by investing in these enterprises and giving them financial support to innovate, expand operations and create sustainable impact on maternal health outcomes.

Sustainable human-capital management programmes focus on Building Tomorrow’s Workforce, Today.

This is achieved by improving access by creating new pathways (k-12 community college and technical and vocational training), eliminating barriers to provide equal access (scholarships), and ensuring people acquire the skills needed to keep pace with new challenges (MIT digital scholars).

These multistakeholder programmes that enhance diversity and inclusion do not only benefit the company and industry, but also society at large, since they allow everyone to realize their full potential.