The Regions leading think tank and training center has successfully conducted the Arabia CSR Awards and a GRI training for the corporate sector. The submission of applications and jury selection has drawn to a close. The awards will conclude next month with a felicitation of the winners of the 2015 cycle. The Network also undertook sustainability training in September, on the GRI guidelines of sustainability reporting, which represents the worlds most popular and credible framework for reporting of environmental, social and governance performance.

The Arabia CSR Awards is the Arab regions own, home grown initiative. It brings to light the best practices of the Arab regions CSR and sustainability champions. A set of rigorous criteria seeks to ensure that only the most progressive and best in class win the coveted awards. So far nearly a hundred organisations are fighting it out to win the award in 2015. Applicants range from large, small and medium businesses to government, semi-government and civil society organisations. This year 12 countries from the Gulf, Levant and North Africa have participated in the awards, with the largest number of contestants coming from the Gulf. Some of the biggest names in business and industry have applied to the award with the hope of validating their CSR and sustainability accomplishments.

The GRI training too had participants from different Arab countries, representing a diversity of industries and sectors. With the growing uptake of non-financial reporting, GRI has emerged as the chosen vehicle of corporate reporting. As a result organisations are keen to enhance capacity to produce detailed, reliable and metrics-driven reports that can be used by stakeholders interested in the organisations overall performance and social license. The Arabia CSR Network was the first local training body to be chosen as the GRIs preferred training partner in Arabic speaking countries in 2011 and has since conducted 26 sessions, successfully training 230 people. The emphasis of the training was on helping organisations to understand the fundamentals of the GRI framework and how to apply its latest guidelines, known as G4. The session was conducted by the Networks competent trainers, who combined lectures, discussions, exercises in a workshop format to deliver a highly effective course. The Network will continue to impart high impact trainings on CSR and sustainability throughout the coming months.