GCU to host PRME event supporting UN Sustainable Development Goals

One of Scotland’s most successful businessmen, Jim McColl OBE, is to encourage businesses in Scotland to support the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

He will present at a Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) event, ‘Making Global Goals Local Business’, on June 13, as part of a UK roadshow organised in collaboration with the UN Global Compact and PRME UK Networks.

Mr McColl is best known for leading a management buyout of Clyde Blowers plc and developing the business into a portfolio of global engineering companies.

He will be joined by Steve Kenzie, Executive Director, of the Global Compact Network UK, who will explain the importance of the SDGs to businesses.

The UN’s SDGs, officially known as ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, is a set of 17 global goals to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all as part of a new sustainable development agenda.

GCU became a PRME signatory in 2012, and in 2013 became the first Scottish university to join the UN Global Compact, the world’s biggest voluntary corporate responsibility partnership. GCU is also one of only 30 members of the global PRME Champions Group in recognition of its leadership role. 

As a PRME Champion Institution, GCU will host one of 11 UK events hosted by university business schools, explaining to a local audience what the SDGs are, why business and academia should care about the Goals, and how business and academia can both contribute to achieving the goals and benefit from doing so.

Dr Alec Wersun, Senior Lecturer in the Glasgow School for Business and Society, said: “As a UN PRME Champion institution, it is our role amongst other things to demonstrate thought and action leadership in the area of responsible business and management, and develop projects that further the goals of PRME. 

“Co-organising the UK-wide SDG Roadshow is a great example of this. By bringing together a wide range of stakeholders to discuss the SDGs, we are hoping to make global goals local, and to stimulate dialogue and action in business and academic communities.”

For more information, and to register, visit the Eventbrite page.