These Young Minds present a sustainable entrepreneurship workshop aimed at improving sustainable opportunities in the current economic downturn at KSW1.01 London School of Economics and Political Science on 28th February, 2012.

The event themed “Sustainability amidst austerity in a Resource scarce and a limited growth world” is in response to the rising youth unemployment and the Eurozone crises coupled with what appears to be a questionable global future in terms of sustainability and economic growth.

“As up to three billion new consumers are added to the middle class over the next 20 years, demand for energy, water, food, and basic materials will soar at a time that finding new sources of supply, and extracting them, is becoming increasingly challenging and expensive. But there are promising opportunities to reduce resource intensity and support sustainable growth” says Jeremy Oppenheim, Director and Senior Partner McKinsey.

The event aims to inspire sustainable environmental and financial gain due to behavioural change towards resource scarcity attributable to global issues such as biodiversity challenges, pollution, population growth and climate change. It highlights innovative entrepreneurship and ‘intrepreneurship’ prospects that proffering pragmatic solutions to the aforementioned issues. Pragmatic solutions will transform existing businesses or prospective startups to yield outcomes with economic, environmental and social values.

Founding Executive Director of These Young Minds, Alim Abubakre says “Business leaders, entrepreneurs, intrepreneurs and the society at large know the importance of sustainability, however, the means by which organisations will integrate environmental, social, and governance issues into their business model—and act on them is limited. The programme will address this topical question which could help turn the resource scarce crunch into a positive crisis laden with sustainable innovation as well as economically and environmentally friendly outcomes”.

David Williams, Founder and CEO of Impact International, will be speaking on the topic of “Creating Sustainable Enterprise”. Impact is a global leader in sustainable business transformation and people development. Established in 1980, Impact works in over 50 countries annually from 17 bases around the world.

David will tell his story of why and how Impact was created, the philosophy that lies behind it and examples of other sustainable enterprises. Charles Simmonds, News Director, BBC suggests that businesses need to move beyond corporate social responsibility and imbibe sustainability in their DNA. In Charles words, “for many years corporate social responsibility has acted as a stand-alone conscience for businesses and organisations with mixed results. In order to effect meaningful, lasting change, sustainability is trying to change the game by improving from within. Is this approach likely to be more effective?"

Other speakers at the event: from consultancy and professional firms include Rt Hon Lord John Gummer, Chairman Sancroft and Sue Riddlestone, Founder and CEO Bioregional and the chair is Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, LSE.

These Young Minds is a service based social enterprise that provides an inclusive platform for stakeholders to learn about management issues in general and corporate responsibility, sustainability issues in particular.

This free seminar is sponsored by LSESU, EAUC, CSRWIRE, Oxford University Press and Lowcarbonjobs.com. The programme will begin at 18.00, at KSW1.01, 20 Kings Way, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. Spaces are very limited but registration could be made here.

These Young Minds

These Young Minds

These Young Minds is a service based social enterprise that provides an all inclusive platform for all stakeholders in the area of corporate responsibility through high powered conferences which will explore areas of partnership and achieve innovation.

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