The Zambia Business in Development Facility (ZBiDF) working with Professor Wayne Dunn of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Training Institute is scheduled to host a Master class on 9th June, 2016.

Professor Dunn is the founder of the CSR Training Institute and has done a lot of work in Corporate Social Responsibility and Cross Sector Partnerships (CSP). He is expected to be in the country for a whole week in June (6th -10th) to conduct CSR events culminating with the Master Class which will be co-facilitated by the ZBiDF and Zambia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ZACCI).

It has been a realised that society is demanding more of business and business innovation coupled with strategic Corporate Social Responsibility which can help to find ways of aligning business and societal value so as to create sustainable competitive advantage and game changing go-forward strategies.

Most companies with CSR programs have a tendency to just donate things to the community especially and not limited to the orphanages, hospitals, schools, poor families etc and leave it there. The question one would ask is: can such a program be beneficial to the community in the long run? And wouldn’t it be better to give the community something that is more sustainable when doing a CSR program and create a win-win situation for companies and the community?

The Master Class will be open (for a fee) to any business seeking to change the way they run their CSR program in order to create value and sustainability for themselves and the community. As Professor Dunn puts it, “CSR and Sustainability are significant costs to modern corporations in many sectors. And failure to ‘get it right’ is a huge risk with potentially devastating impacts on brand, projects, careers and even companies.”

CSR Partnerships can be an efficient means to deliver both developmental value to the community and value to the organization. Whether it is a business partnering with a development partner, a government ministry partnering with industry or other partnerships there is a potential for synergy and improved and broadened value creation.

With the CSR Partnerships, businesses can leverage off each other and work in a coordinated manner in order not to duplicate efforts as well as to give back to the communities they operate in.

The people who would eventually benefit from all this are the communities that these businesses operate in coupled with the businesses growing their brands through partnering with other businesses that are in the space.

The businesses will not only giving back to the communities but they would also be creating business networks as well as exploring other business opportunities that would make their businesses viable and favourable to competition in the long run coupled with massive publicity.

Therefore, ZBiDF is calling on all companies seeking to change their CSR program and to make more sustainable to book now and begin preparing to be part of this event.