The Department of the Environment in the UK estimates that 2 billion tonnes of waste products is generated in the European Union each year: a third from agriculture and forestry, another third from construction and demolition, and the remainder from mining and quarrying, manufacturing, municipal waste and energy production. The most predominant form of waste management is landfill use: in 2004, a survey of waste management in the European Union found that eight countries rely on landfill for over 50% of their waste disposal, and five use incineration to meet over a third of their waste management needs. Only a few countries relied on recycling as their primary waste management solution, and in the United States recycling adoption has only reached 28%.
YGL Response
Closed-loop economics will call for a re-examination of company strategy. Consumer goods companies, for example, will be forced to go beyond their position as value-adding intermediaries between raw material suppliers and end consumers, and instead broaden their reach into new sectors of the economic loop. Far from buying raw materials, manufacturing products, and selling them on to retailers or end consumers, consumer goods companies will have to take responsibility for the impact of their products at every stage from production and manufacture to consumption and recycling. This extended reach will require companies to manage larger and more complex networks of relationships beyond the traditional supplier-customer dynamic, and to more actively manage the whole-life impact of their products.
Key 2010 Accomplishments
Held session with YGLs in Tianjin, China and held a Webinar with interested YGLs
Next Milestones
Taskforce reception and Davos launch of the YGL Taskforce position paper (private side event). Will include Bill McDonough the father of Cradle to Cradle as keynote.
The AppBridge mission is to empower “The Bottom Billion” youth through universally accessible, demand-driven and market-oriented educational mobile applications by synergizing an open source technology platform with a cooperative ecosystem of education and health content providers, academic institutions, developers, telecom operators, sponsors and end-users.
Overview:
Through collaboration and in partnership with others, we are developing an open source, cloud-based digital platform designed to connect talented mobile application developers with formal and informal education and health content providers, and co-create a powerful distribution channel to bridge the digital divide and educate young people in the bottom billion through their cellular phones. Each educational app will be submitted to The AppBridge platform, vetted, distributed to partner Telecom Operators and promoted in “The AppBridge Zone”, where it will be available to end-users. The AppBridge platform will track the download activity and usage of each distributed App, enabling “real time” feedback and allowing for a dynamic, evolving virtual educational experience for users.
With an estimated 3.8 billion mobile subscribers in the developing world, there is enormous opportunity to provide formal and informal educational tools to individuals who do not otherwise have access to basic math, literacy, and health information. The AppBridge is committed to co-creating an important “blueprint” for how digital and information based solutions can be launched in a frictionless way in critical environments. This is a non-profit social enterprise.
History
The AppBridge concept grew out of collaboration between Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan, YGL and Professor Umar Saif, his students and YGL Margo Drakos in the fall of 2010. Umar and Margo oversaw the development of two interactive Mathematics SMS App Games by two teams of engineering students at LUMS. The games emulate the experience of a student sitting through a math quiz in a classroom and enable a group of people to compete with each other using their cell phones. We asked the LUMS students to document their app development and testing on their own blogs:
After the Apps were developed, Margo found the challenge was promoting and distributing the Apps to the target end-users. While in Davos this January at the annual World Economic Forum Summit, Margo discussed the concept in a number of meetings with academic institutions, corporate leaders, education content providers and telecom partners. She discovered there was overwhelming commitment to create, sponsor, and distribute educational Apps for young adults with limited access to education and a number of fellow Young Global Leaders who shared her passion. The AppBridge was conceived.
Next Steps
We are currently establishing a 501(c)(3).
We are working to develop the open source, cloud based platform to receive and distribute the mobile apps.
In the next year, our objective is to launch two pilot programs in India and the Middle East focusing on English Language Training. Each pilot program will include the following work-flow and testing:
Create our first cooperative ecosystem of education and health content providers, academic institutions, developers, telecom operators, sponsors and end-users.
Build the open source cloud-based platform.
Enable student developers to “adopt-an-app” through the platform and go through the content request process with our educational content providers to build an effective app for the target population in India.
Receive the apps, test the apps and distribute to the appropriate App Stores.
Work with our partners in India to effectively promote the “AppBridge Zone” Apps to the target end-users.
Track the download activity and usage of each distributed App to our ecosystem.
Engage with and garner feedback from our ecosystem.
Refine our ecosystem accordingly and scale our platform to other regions.
Partnerships:
We are a 2011 Member of the Clinton Global Initiative
We are currently working with the following Partners:
Accel Partners
InfoSys
Lahore University of Management and Sciences
McGraw-Hill
Mobile Movements
MorphLabs
Openwave
SwitchCase Group
World Economic Forum and Forum of Young Global Leader
This YGL GRI develops collaborative strategies for promoting efficient urban mobility (e.g. battery standards, cross-industry collaboration, effective multi-modal transportation etc.) How would CO2 efficient urban means of transport ideally be if they were rethought systemically? How do we improve safety for all (motorized vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians) and reduce localized concentrated air and noise pollution and yet reduce congestion and travel time? Can we create powerful alternatives by cross-industry collaborative efforts, using existing technologies?
“Our cities are becoming more and more crowded. A city needs cars like a fish needs a bicycle primarily because you can’t use all that speed because of the many obstacles. (…) in 20-30 years people will not primarily use cars to get around in the cities”. Dean Kamen
Background
In January, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, United Kingdom Prime Minister and Group of 20 Chairman Gordon Brown appealed for “business to formulate with us the economic and policy conditions that will incentivize their investment and that will bring the low-carbon economy into being.” To this end, he called on the Forum to facilitate a “new business-led mission in support of an ambitious climate agreement in Copenhagen, focused on the policies that will lead to business investment in a low-carbon recovery.”
Between 1990 and 2007, transport emissions increased by a third while emissions from other sectors decreased; the share of transport in total emissions rose from 1990 to 2007. More than half the global population now lives in urban environments, by 2030 an estimated 60% and by 2050 a whopping 80%. Although this is a quick and dirty approximation it does indicate the need for rethinking Urban Mobility.
The problem is even more pressing in developing countries. With an increase in population and a steady stream of people moving into cities, there is a huge pressure on mobility infrastructure in cities which will become even more acute in the coming decades. The developing world, or „first billion‟ and their cities have evolved in a particular direction in the 20th century. It is absolutely impractical, unviable and impossible that the „next six billion‟ representing the developing world can follow a similar „car-centric‟ model. There is a crying need for integrated system thinking for the (mega) cities of the future to work out mobility requirements vis-á-vis individual, city, and environment cost.
Together cities are already bigger than any individual market or alliance.
Meanwhile, urban populations are becoming increasingly uniform, as a consequence of globalization. Already, cities have more challenges in common than countries have with each other and have less difference – no foreign policy and military and such. Inter-city governance structures are slowly forming. The need to reduce CO2 emissions, a global, urban market, and new, altered traffic habits have combined to contribute to the generation of new needs and new products, under the name of “Urban Mobility”.
Are there opportunities for private – public partnership to respectively tackle urban CO2 emissions and leveraging a new market?
Idea
The main idea is to create an Urban Mobility authority in order to connect the stakeholders within urban transport and create common standards and promote a holistic approach. Issue
Decreases CO2 emission globally, harmful pollution locally and improves lifestyle, security and health issues in cities.
Impact
It creates an Urban Mobility authority allowing for the creation of new product typologies, systems and business models for urban transport.
Criteria
The success criteria would be to create an urban mobility authority whose initiatives spur cross- disciplinary cooperation. The ambition is to find a pilot city that would implement the policy recommendations.
Challenges
To make people within very old and stable silos communicate. No immediate authority on the subject. To overcome stakeholder‟s short sited self-interest.
Change • We need to define urban mobility as unique field rather than a subset of ecology, urbanity, transport
• We need to prioritize the greening of cities • We need to rethink business models / incentives to encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration
• We need to integrate existing infrastructure, public and private offerings and potentially smart grids
• We need to cherry pick best features from private and public transport respectively and have a place for all relevant areas of multi-modal transportation including motorized and non-motorized transportation
• We need to address distinctly different demographic needs across cities and map-out city typologies
• We need to integrate new social behavior and tools into commuting • We need to apply off the shelf technologies to spur new solution • We need to bring together distinctly different and relevant fields of expertise and industries
The global financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing economic recession has brought under question the character and trustworthiness of business managers around the world. Unlike other professions such as medicine or law, which explicitly recognize a commitment to serving the greater good and formally espouse a strict code of conduct, management is yet to do either. Widespread views of management often subordinate business contributions to the greater good to the maximization of short-term financial returns, and emphasize a narrow view of managerial responsibilities as serving the interest of shareholders over clients, employees, or society at large. These views misrepresent the full complexity of the management profession and its role in driving global prosperity and, as we have painfully learned, can have disastrous economic consequences when taken to the extreme.
YGL Response
The YGL Global Business Oath aims to transform the value system dominant today among business leaders around the world by: (a) Explicitly recognizing that the ultimate purpose of management is to serve society by bringing together people and resources to create sustainable and inclusive prosperity that no single individual can create alone; (b) Recognizing that the effects (good and bad) of managerial decisions on the welfare of society are amplified by the accumulation of resources under legal corporations; (c) Proposing a code of conduct – a modern-day Hippocratic Oath of Business – that spells out a commitment to “doing no harm” throughout the practice of management. Hence, the Hippocratic Oath of Business aims to commit managers and business school graduates throughout the world to a common Code of Ethics and raise their awareness of ethical values such as integrity, honesty, reliability and responsibility.
Key 2010 Accomplishments
YGLs developed the “hippocratic oath for business” together with 300+ YGLs worldwide, in a year-long process which ensured the applicability of it to the business context but also in different cultural contexts. A website was launched (www.globalbusinessoath.org) for people to sign the oath, individual YGLs secured their boards and organisations to sign – resulting in over XXX signatories. The YGLs also worked with other “Oath” organisations to share experience and attempt to harmonize the different codes.
Next Milestones
The Global Business Oath will be set up as an independent NGO with a dedicated secretariat. The governing board of the organisation will be 50% YGLs but will also include other Oath initiatives (MBA Oath, Aspen Institute, etc.). The YGL Directorate is working to ensure that current Active Member YGLs remain involved in the appropriate manner.
Leaders
Angel Cabrera, Samer I. Asfour, Tewodros Ashenafi, Elena Barmakova, Gustavo Cardoso, François-Philippe Champagne, Adrian D. Cheok, Andrew L. Cohen, Arturo Condo, Jennifer Corriero, Jitesh Gadhia, Suhas Gopinath, Haakon of Norway, Lars Hinrichs, Christopher Jahns, Penny Low, Leslie W. Maasdorp, Aaron McCormack, Patricia Menendez-Cambo, David Munro, Henrik Naujoks, Efrat Peled, Paolo Ribotta, Alvaro Rodriguez Arregui, Daniel Sachs, Dan Shine, Jens Martin Skibsted.
We need as many YGLs as possible to sign the oath and to use their platforms of influence such as business leaders associations (e.g. Mongolia) or boards of directors and senior management teams (e.g. Banco Compartamos in Mexico) to encourage other acting business professionals to join the movement.
For real progress to be made in this world we need to strengthen what unites us in stead of constantly focusing on what sets us apart. One thing that all human beings have in common is that we all want our dignity to be recognized. We want to strengthen the fabric of our common humanity so that we realize that we are interconnected, that we are all in this together and that the hardships that is experienced by another person also affects us.
YGL Response
We have developed a concept called Dignity Day which is a leadership course, an ethics course, a motivational seminar and an anti bullying effort for youth in a two hour package. We have done Dignity Days in more than thirty countries the last three years as a result of YGLs taking the lead around the world.
Since 2008 we have organized Global Dignity Day on October 20. This day we go into schools around the world to focus on the fundementals of dignity in society as well as in our daily life.
In addition to Dignity Day we want to spur a global conversatoin focused on dignity and we promote dignity centred leadership and decition making.
Background
Global Dignity is an autonomous non-profit, non-criticism and non-partisan project. We wish to be inspiration-based; commending and encouraging best practice and dignity centered leadership rather than criticizing shortcomings.
The mission of the Dignity Project is to implement globally the universal right of every human being to lead a dignified life. This is a paradigm shift in thinking about our global challenges, a new language and a mindset to approach issues of poverty, peace, and progress.
We all have the ability to increase the dignity of others and thus we increase our own dignity. The dignity approach works on all levels: it works for children and for adults, it works for men and for women, and it works on the micro and macro level. Our aspiration is to eventually make every day of every year a day of dignity for men and women around the world, especially those without a voice to raise for themselves.
This idea depends on seeing dignity in action, and in all walks of life, based on 5 dignity principles.
Leaders
Co-Founders: Prince Haakon of Norway, Pekka Himanen, John Hope Bryant
Board Members: Prince Haakon of Norway, Pekka Himanen, John Hope Bryant, Hilde Schwab, Irene Woo Chu
Supported by Young Global Leaders
Looking For
We have a concept that is proven and works. We need scaling. For that we need funding. We are currently looking at how we can reach as many children through our Dignity Day concept as possible. We would like to set up a Global Dignity office with one or two people employed that can coordinate the activities around the world.
Get Involved
Educate yourself on Dignity and learn the Dignity curriculum here.
Sign the Dignity Principles and make them instrumental in your daily lives
You can host the next Global Dignity Day in your local– next global event to be held in October 2010, but you can make this happen any day of the week!
On our planet of 6.7 billion people, one billion suffer from hunger while another billion suffer from obesity and lifestyle-related diseases. This global dichotomy – where people are dying of hunger while others are literally eating themselves to death – is both ironic and alarming. It represents the world today – one that we need to redesign.
YGL Response
Table for Two addresses these two issues simultaneously. The mechanism is simple: every time you eat a healthy Table for Two meal at a participating company cafeteria or restaurant, 20 cents is donated to fund a school meal in a country suffering from hunger. As you prevent your own obesity, you are also helping to alleviate a child’s hunger. Your meal is his/her meal. You are eating a win-win meal together at a Table for Two.
Key 2010 Accomplishments
Programme fully established with 300 companies providing 5.2m meals served to date (annually over 23,300 children are provided meals every day).
Events held in 2010:
2010/05/03: TABLE FOR TWO USA kick-off event at Columbia University (New York, NY)
2010/07/21: Lecture and Reception at Japan Society (New York, NY)
2010/07/22: Lecture and Book Signing at Kinokuniya (New York, NY)
2010/07/25: Speech at Japan Block Fair (New York, NY)
2010/07/27: Lecture at UN Forum (New York, NY)
2010/09/10: Informal talk and gathering with Net Impact and JET members (San Francisco, CA)
2010/09/14: Talk at San Francisco State University (San Francisco, CA)
2010/09/15: Talk at University of San Francisco, hosted by Net Impact (San Francisco, CA)
Upcoming Event: 2011 YGL Public Leadership Initiative Master Class – 12 & 13 July
The YGL Public Leadership task force had an excellent response and we have 70 confirmed attendees for the upcoming summer event in New York City. If you are interested and missed out the application deadline, please email YGLPublicLeadership@gmail.com to put your name on a waiting list.
FINDING
The World Economic Forum has undertaken an ambitious and timely effort to rethink and redesign the public systems, institutions and processes that enable global collaboration. While the structures of the existing global order undoubtedly need to change and be improved if we want to effectively tackle 21st century challenges, the new arrangements and organizations will ultimately only be as good as the people who make them work. That is, even the best institutions and systems need outstanding leadership if they are to excel.
YGL RESPONSE
This initiative explores how to foster the next generation of effective leaders in the public sector. In addition to holding sessions at World Economic Forum regional events, they are organizing
a Master Class on Public Sector Leadership in July, 2011.
KEY 2010 ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Conducted a survey on Public Leadership with the YGL Community and used the corresponding findings to structure sessions at multiple World Economic Forum Annual & Regional Meetings and to develop the Master Class for YGLs interested in joining the Public Sector. This group has work closely YGL Community Partner, PWC, and would invite you to peruse the below links and articles related to Public Leadership.
NEXT MILESTONES
The task force is currently concentrating its efforts on delivering a top-notch Master Class this summer. Following that event, it will discuss the next objectives.
RELATED LINKS
The War for Talent – http://www.pwc.com/en_GX/gx/hr-management-services/pdf/war-for-talent-goes-public.pdf
The World’s Leadership Deficit – http://www.thomascrampton.com/world-economic-forum/ygl-davos/
Australia’s Public Leadership Deficit – http://www.thomascrampton.com/young-global-leaders/public-leadership-deficit/
Upcoming Event: 2011 YGL Public Leadership Initiative Master Class – 12 & 13 July The YGL Public Leadership task force had an excellent response and we have 70 confirmed attendees for the upcoming summer event in New York City. If you are interested and missed out the application deadline, please email YGLPublicLeadership@gmail.com to put your [...]
On our planet of 6.7 billion, 1 billion suffer from hunger, while another 1 billion suffer from obesity and related life style diseases. The global dichotomy – where people are dying of hunger while others are literally eating themselves to death – is both ironic and alarming. It represents the world today – one that we need to redesign. TABLE FOR TWO addresses these two issues simultaneously.
The mission of Global Dignity is to implement the universal right of every human being to lead a dignified life. We all have the ability to increase the dignity of others and thus we increase our own dignity.
Is the best talent attracted to leading these new institutions? Why is it important for young leaders to be interested in public service? Are people motivated to serve for the common good? What are the new attributes that we need from future leaders? Who are the historical leaders that we can learn from and which of their successful characteristics that we should mimic? What do you hope for the future generation of leaders and why?
The YGL Global Business Oath aims to transform the value system dominant today among business leaders around the world by (a) explicitly recognizing that the ultimate purpose of management is to serve society by bringing together people and resources to create sustainable and inclusive prosperity that no single individual can create alone, (b) recognizing that the effects (good and bad) of managerial decisions in the welfare of society are amplified by the accumulation of resources under legal corporations, and (c) proposing a code of conduct—a modern day “Hippocratic Oath of Business”—that spells out a commitment to “doing no harm” throughout the practice of management.
Keep In Touch: