I’ve just finished reading the material that Kulima Solutions has prepared for our Practical Sustainable Development and Reporting Conference and feel very motivated. Sustainable Development is really important to business. Hundreds of column cm are written in the newspapers every day about "going green", climate change, recycling, pollution, saving energy, etc. The Copenhagen conference at the end of the year is going to change how we do business. (We will be offering a workshop covering Copenhagen early next year).

In the meantime businesses need to start working out how to manage their sustainable development activities. The first step is to analyse existing activities and report on them.
There are many reasons to consider Sustainability Reporting:

• Compliance with environmental legislation
• Financial benefits from increased cost efficiency
• Appeal to investors
• Identification of further business opportunities
• Improved workplace and employee morale
• Improved community relations
• Contribution to environmental risk management

Katherine Vincent and Tracy Cull will be taking you through the most important reporting methodologies:

• The GRI
• Accountability (AA) 1000
• ISO 14000 (I like her comment on this one)
  • Just because a company is ISO14001 accredited doesn’t mean it is “environmentally-friendly”, “green” or “sustainable” – just that it has a system in place for reporting.
• FTSE 4 Good
• Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes
• The JSE Socially Responsible Index (SRI)
  

... and during the course we will not only explain each aspect but show you practically how it comes together and how to properly measure and report. This is knowledge that can quite literally change the world!

Our Sustainable Reporting Project
Over the past eight months we have been working on a live project with an important client, to manage and implement the information gathering process for the GRI and will be giving a live demo of how this has been designed. This project is internet based to make data gathering easier. There are over 250 different questions or indicators that need to be answered by up to 100 different people and analysed. This is usually the biggest drawback of preparing a sustainability report because the data collection process can be so difficult to manage. Our methodology, to be demo-ed for the first time next week, will show you how to streamline the process and speed up reporting time.

Part of the conference will include group work where each delegate will begin creating their own set of sustainable reporting questions. You will leave with a fair knowledge of not only sustainable development, the indexes, but also know how to implement and design, or improve your own sustainable report.

Bookings are about to close. Even if you are not currently involved in sustainability, it will be valuable for everyone in Marketing, Corporate Governance and most certainly Corporate Social Responsibility.

Dates:
28th & 29th October 2009 - JHB - Gallagher Estate
4th & 5th November 2009 - CPT - Belmont Conference Centre
11th & 12th November 2009 - DBN - Makaranga Garden Lodge

Price: R6450.00 incl VAT

To reserve your seat please phone 011 483 1190 or visit www.econobee.co.za