Business leaders in Dubai met recently to discuss harnessing their employee resources to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Mobilising volunteering programmes to achieve sustainable change by 2030 was the focus of a Leadership Forum organised by DP World and Emirates NBD as part of IMPACT 2030 – the only international private-sector led coalition aligning employee resources to achieve the goals which focus on key global issues such as poverty, inequality and climate change.

Objectives of the Leadership Forum include:

• Increasing the knowledge and understanding of IMPACT 2030 as a global private sector led collaboration to mobilise volunteers to achieve the SDGs.
• Sharing the results from a UAE survey on volunteering in which 48 companies took part with 90,000 volunteers contributing almost 1 million volunteer hours through their activities in 2016.
• Identifying next steps on how to align employee volunteering with the SDGs.

DP World Group Chairman and CEO, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, said: “Private sector collaboration will contribute enormously to the success of the goals of the United Nations and companies in the UAE are playing a leading role in this region. Employee volunteering programmes that bring together companies in different sectors will go a long way to helping tackle some of the world’s issues around poverty, inequality and climate change. By planning our efforts together, we can make more headway into alleviating some of these problems for the benefit of millions of people worldwide.”

The Leadership Forum coincides with the Year of Zayed in the UAE that provides an opportunity for businesses to create a sense of community responsibility, to develop a spirit of volunteering and to encourage specialised volunteer programmes.