Corporate Sustainability on the big screen: How to get your efforts noticed
October 26, 2012
From mobile technology that assists poor farmers, featured in our Life Apps series, to helping a global corporate involve its staff with the Millennium Development Goals, tve is an ngo engaging with the private sector to make this the decade of solutions that it truly needs to be.
At Rio + 20 in June this year the potential of business to do good came under the spotlight as never before. “Rio+20 did not deliver the future we want but may assist in catalyzing a chance of realizing the future we need if real energy and leadership is shown in partnership with the private sector,” said the UN Environment Programme spokesperson, Nick Nuttall.
Against this backdrop tve launched its first Corporate Sustainability Film Awards – to encourage companies to share with a wider audience what they are doing in the field of the environment, community investment, and inspiring good governance. Our hope for the Awards over the coming years is twofold: firstly, that companies will share more widely their initiatives and innovations in CSR; and secondly, that the scrutiny of our judging panels and online viewers will in some small way help to ensure that companies live up to the vision and mission that their films express.
The Awards may not be what is expected of a not-for-profit best known for the production of hundreds of broadcast documentaries about the environment and development. These films have, over the last 28 years, helped change policies and mindsets in global institutions and companies, in communities and families. But increasingly the stories we feel we need to tell are about solutions to global challenges of sustainable development – and the partnerships with the corporate world that are necessary to achieve them. We want to get innovative ideas debated and give clever initiatives more exposure.
At tve, we believe in the power of communication – our mission is to inspire change towards a greener, fairer world, through film. We want to see genuinely sustainable initiatives shared and debated, not just in a written report but through that most accessible of media – film.
We know that companies hesitate to put their heads above the parapet on their sustainability record – we want to encourage them to be brave, shout a little about what they are doing, be prepared to back up their claims, and inspire their peers.
And that’s what the overall winning film, chosen by our panel of judges from the worlds of ethical trading, film, ngos and corporate sustainability, set out to do. At our Awards ceremony in mid October, held at London’s BAFTA, Grupo Bimbo was awarded Overall Best Film Award. The Mexican-based company’s film is dedicated to its 127,000 associates around the world. From the emphasis Grupo Bimbo puts on improving quality of life for its associates and local communities, through to its policy on energy and production lines, the film sets out the company’s ambitions for sustainability.
We hope that the Awards will inspire more companies to set out for scrutiny, via film, their strategy and ethos on sustainability. We also hope that, like Grupo Bimbo, they will tell that story in an inspirational and watchable way.
Cheryl Campbell is the executive director of tvewww.tve.org
COMMENTS