Case Studies

The Corporate Social Responsibility Workshop, which was held in the United Nations Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, was co-organized by MarketDirect Business Communications, on behalf of CIBJO, the World Jewellery Confederation, together with the United Nation Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). The workshop took place from September 19 to September 26, 2010.
 
CIBJO, which is a confederation of national jewelry associations from more than 40 countries, has been formally affiliated to the United Nations since 2006. In this capacity, it was invited to participate in Shanghai during UNITAR Week, during which events would be presented that emphasize the role of CSR as leverage towards sustainable development and the achievement of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly as they are expressed on the African continent. In inviting CIBJO to become part of the event, United Nations was keen to use the jewelry sector as a case study and role model of how a business community has mobilized in adopting Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Social Investment as an industry-wide strategy.
 
Attending the workshop were more than 70 jewelry industry participants. About 30 flew in from outside of China, and the remainder represented leading Chinese jewelry corporations.
 
MarketDirect was involved in all stages of the project, including the organization and logistics, liaison between CIBJO and UNITAR, preparation of the educational program (managed by UNITAR together with AIFOMD, which is affiliated to both CIBJO and the United Nations and provided a team of CSR experts), and providing media coverage before, during and after the event.
 
It was a complex and multi-faceted project. All the proceedings needed to be translated into Chinese (Mandarin). This required the translation of all written materials, and the provision of simultaneous translation services during the event.
 
An eight-minute movie reviewing the evolution of CSR in the jewelry business was produced prior to the workshop in cooperation with Jewelry Television, which is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee in the United States. During the workshop all the presentations were filmed, and the video was loaded onto YouTube and linked to the CIBJO website, upon a special section that had been created especially for the workshop at the Shanghai Expo.