PRME Mid-Year Update

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

(Margaret Mead, anthropologist, recipient of the Planetary Citizen of the Year Award, 1978)

PRME Mid-Year Update

Dear PRME community,

First of all, a warm thank you to all of you who engaged with such commitment in preparing, rolling out, being on stage and engaging with the audience at the 2022 PRME Global Forum on 3 June. Again, this year we had two successful ‘sections’: an Eastern Hemisphere and a Western Hemisphere to accommodate for the time zone differences across the globe, with 12 hours of content and more than 1,000 registrants. This is impressive in these ‘zoom-fatigued’ times. We had more than 30 sessions and more than 100 speakers with a 50/50 gender balance. We also launched the Positive Impact Rating (PIR) 2022 Results, 1 PRME Faculty Award winner and 2 runners-up, 1 PRME Student Award and 2 runners-up as well as 6 SIP Recognition Awards. Warm congratulations to the winners and the runners-up who are a true source of inspiration. And warm thank you to the panels of judges who spent hours reading, assessing, and discussing to make the difficult decisions. We were also fortunate to announce the donation of 1 mil USD to PRME from Economics of Mutuality (EoM) to develop a digital platform to help the PRME community with sharing knowledge on responsible management education and with a particular focus on the SIP report. I am excited and grateful to EoM for their support to the PRME mission

Let me take the opportunity to make this May Newsletter a ‘catch-up’ with brief information about some of the activities fromm the PRME Secretariat.

As part of our strategy 2022-2023, to focus on supporting and strengthening PRME Chapter work, Sophie Kacki and I made some in-person visits to PRME Chapters. These meetings have been immensely valuable in terms of understanding better the needs, challenges and potential for the regional and national Chapter work, and in what ways we in the PRME Secretariat may support better. The tone at these Chapter meetings differs from the conversations the Chapters were engaged in just a few years ago in many respects. While there is a still a strong focus on the different ways to integrate sustainable development across disciplines and programs, and to have more sustainability content across the entire curriculum, there is also a new focus on debating the content of the curriculum, such as assumptions about growth. We have additionally embarked on discussions related to how we can support collective fundraising efforts within or across Chapters for programmatic work such as climate action and inequity/inclusion. We will explore such venues further and develop some suggestions.

PRME Global Students (PGS) PGS will arrange its first PGS Annual Summit on 14 June, and you are all invited to register here and see the agenda here. PGS was launched during the 2021 Virtual PRME Global Forum and is a network by and for students within the PRME global community aiming to empower and connect student organizations with a focus on sustainable development. PGS is led by a team of Regional Leaders comprised of nine youth leaders spread over all continents and has so far identified 312 sustainability-oriented student organizations actively operating within PRME Signatory Members. This year is the first year where PGS is rolling out a series of activities such as a newsletter and the annual summit, and I am very excited to see where this excellent and ambitious PRME initiative will take us.

SIP Impact Review As you may remember, in 2020, the PRME Board decided to establish a PRME SIP Impact Sub-Committee under the Nominations and Governance Committee with the leadership of Wilfred Mijnhardt, Policy Director, Rotterdam School of Management. The SIP Report holds huge strategic potential for PRME. Formally launched in 2008, all PRME Signatory Members are committed to publishing a SIP Report every two years according to the Six Principles. There is a strong request from the PRME community to make the SIP Report a bit more ‘steering’ in its direction and content, while of course allowing for local and contextual scope. The Sub-Committee has engaged all Chapters to provide input in developing a set of indicators (quantitative) and narratives/examples (qualitative) that schools will be encouraged to report on in the future. It is a long process, and it should be. It is not something we take lightly or that can be decided upon at PRME Global. So, I want to thank all of you who have engaged and are engaging in this strategically important development.

The Impactful Five (i5): Learning in Leadership Education The PRME (i5) Program is happening and I am delighted to say that all 17 PRME Chapters, plus colleagues in China, are engaged in it. As you know, the main purpose of the PRME (i5) Program is to train business school faculty in developing holistic skillsets among leadership students. The program importantly also includes an ambition to measure and account for progress in this respect. After careful preparation in Q3 and Q4 of 2021, we have now established the governance structure: the PRME (i5) Advisory Board, the PRME ExPeG (Expert Pedagogy Group) and the PRME (i5) Assessment Framework Task Force. Harvard Graduate School of Education and Sulitest are respectively leading the work on the (i5) Playbook and the (i5) Assessment Framework. All 17 Chapters, plus our Chinese colleagues, are participating, having nominated an expert to the ExPeG from each region. This is the largest ever programmatic work for PRME. The first edition of the PRME (i5) Playbook will be launched in August 2022, and examples of holistic skillset pedagogies will be collected between September and December 2022, at the same time as the first training of ‘Pioneers/Early Adopters’ (working title) is planned to happen. The Assessment Framework that will follow this progression will accordingly be tested in its first edition during this period to explore how we can account for holistic faculty pedagogies and improved student learning.

PRME Secretariat Staff Last and importantly, PRME is ‘staffing up’.

On 1 March, we were truly delighted to welcome Professor Gustavo Loiola, from ISAE, Brazil, to the PRME Secretariat as PRME Manager of (i5). Gustavo is a longstanding PRME supporter in his capacity as Professor and Chair of PRME Chapter LAC (Latin America and the Caribbean). Gustavo is working on the rollout of PRME’s largest-ever programmatic work, specifically responsible for the (i5) ExPeG and the PRME SIP Impact work where he brings expertise and will explore how the (i5) work can be related to the SIP Report.

On 1 March, we warmly welcomed Dr. Paloma Haschke-Joseph to the PRME Secretariat as a Lead Project Manager for the 2022 PRME Global Forum. Paloma was recruited on a contract to assist us in making the Global Forum happen and she has taken the responsibility to transform the planned in-person event to be an online-only event. She brings a PhD in political science as well as UN experience and, with Dr. Luisa Murphy, she has paved the way for a new strategic business model around PRME events.

On 18 April, we were fortunate to warmly welcome Sianne Powe as PRME Communications Coordinator. Sianne arrives to PRME with experience from working on the UN Global Compact Events and Communications Team and as such, brings the network and practices from UNGC to the PRME team. Sianne will work on PRME communications at the operational level, but she will importantly work with Sophie Kacki and me to develop a PRME strategy for communications.

We will soon have a call out for a PRME Senior Manager (i5) and expect to have the position filled by 1 August.

There is much exciting work ahead of us. I am thrilled to have your support and I look much forward to seeing you all in-person and on zoom.

Warm regards,

Mette Morsing

Head of PRME, Principles for Responsible Management Education

UN Global Compact, New York