PrintHONG KONG, Monday 27th April, 2009 – In May 2009, twenty-five young executives from throughout the region will participate in GIFT’s Executive Leadership Development Programme to define a social enterprise business opportunity in Cambodia that preserves forest resources and combats climate change.
Each year, Cambodia loses roughly 140,000 hectares of forest as a result of unchecked collection of firewood for domestic cooking, felling to clear land for crops like oil palm, and other agricultural activities that irreversibly remove forest resources. In recent years, the rate of deforestation has been further accelerated by increases in population and development of Cambodia’s economy. As lifestyles become more urbanised, energy demands increase - and much of this can only be met from wood, charcoal and other biomass sources. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 85 percent of domestic energy use in Cambodia comes from forest resources that cannot be replenished.
The Global Young Leaders Programme (YLP), running from 27th April to 8th May, uses a unique experiential approach to executive education by leveraging the skills of participants to produce a viable business model that links energy efficiency technologies, forest products and carbon markets to rural incomes. With higher incomes, communities in forested regions will form tendencies to protect forests rather than fell them. To secure investment for the rural businesses, the participant will, as part of the YLP, present a five-year business plan to potential investors in Phnom Penh at the end of the programme.
In 2005 GIFT made a commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative on climate change reduction and poverty alleviation through the YLP. The overall methodology of the latter is designed to initiate a fundamental shift in the understanding of business and its influence and impacts, by engaging participants in a life-changing field project. Chandran Nair, the CEO of GIFT, was recently featured in the Wall St. Journal explaining the YLP’s innovative approach.
In this, the 9th YLP, participants come from companies such as Prudential Corporation Asia, Honeywell, Skadden, IBM, Hewitt Associates, MTR Corporation, Meinhardt, Sonepar and Hite Electric Technology, as well as organisations such as the Rainforest Alliance, Tsinghua University and others. A total of 13 nationalities will be represented from countries including Australia, Canada, Philippines, Iran, Cambodia, Singapore, India, China, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, United States and Thailand.
From discussions with YLP corporate partners and participants, Programme Manager Eric Stryson has observed a mind shift within organisations. “Individual employees are looking for new and effective ways to engage in regional social challenges,” Stryson said. “The scale and visibility of issues related to energy, water, resources, food safety, rural access and others have increased. They are now no longer seen as simple environmental problems but fundamentally linked to the future economic vitality of the region - and young executives are becoming acutely aware of this.”
Today, these young executives are more critical when addressing the business relevance of such issues compared to their predecessors, many of whom are now in senior management. The new breed of young executive is looking for alternative ways to educate himself or herself and, hopefully, bring new thinking to their organisations. Part of this involves going beyond basic voluntary programmes and traditional classroom lessons on leadership; this new thinking can be found in applying business skills to real world challenges, which is the crux of the YLP.
The urgency for new talent who possess such an outlook is aptly summarised by the Hay Group which notes, “Only one in five CEOs have confidence that their approach to talent management can deliver the leaders they need. This, in a context where between half and three quarters of senior managers are due to retire by 2010.”
The majority of participants on the 9th YLP are from global companies. Yet, despite the sentiment expressed by many companies for new forms of learning, it is marked that there is still hesitation from companies to invest in such learning under the current economic climate. As a result, a number of participants are joining the programme on their own personal initiative - and without corporate support - as a sign of their commitment.
GIFT CEO Chandran Nair said, “What we have learned is that the motivation for joining the YLP is now being driven primarily by engaged young executives within companies who see the need to rapidly expand their knowledge beyond the traditional functional skills. The task for companies is to replace old-school thinking with wholly unconventional methods in order to stay current with the changing times and attuned to the needs of their future leaders.”
YLP projects are based in key developing regional markets including Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia and, in the past, have addressed critical business issues such as rural supply chains, clean technology and sustainable agriculture, among others.
For additional information about the Global Young Leaders Programme (YLP), please contact Eric Stryson at or (852) 3571 8124 or visit: https://www.globalinstitutefortomorrow.com.
About GIFT:
GIFT is an independent social venture think tank that prepares future business leaders to think and act with a higher degree of empathy and social awareness in order to meet the growing challenges of globalisation.
