I am very happy to present to you the ninth issue of the UN-Business Focal Point newsletter. There is much to report and this issue contains some very interesting announcements from a wide variety of agencies. Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to contribute...

The "Eco Go Beyond" project is a strategic CSR initiative of MAS Holdings and commenced in August 2006 with a flagship initiative focusing on a sustainable development education project. The project aimed at introducing this concept and creating understanding of applicability to youth as tomorrow’s leaders. With this new initiative, tomorrow’s leaders are empowered with the requisite skills and knowledge to build a better and more sustainable tomorrow...

Representatives of Google and the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) have unveiled a powerful new online mapping program that provides an up-close and multifaceted view of some of the world's major displacement crises and the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping the victims...

GAIN has launched an initiative to establish a Malnutrition Safety Net which aims to ensure that 400 million people, especially women and children, receive the nutrition they need by protecting existing nutrition programs, fortifying basic staple foods with essential vitamins and minerals, and lowering the cost of vitamin and mineral premix for the food industry...

Some additional new partnerships with short summaries and links to further information...

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that around 6.5 million Pacific islanders, representing 80% of low income people living in urban, peri-urban and predominantly remote villages and islands scattered across an ocean area covering 1/3 of the world’s surface, do not have access to both formal and informal financial services. As a consequence, the majority of people who are excluded are not able to achieve their full economic potential and are denied the opportunities to attain a productive and dignified living...

This interview with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appeared in the July/August issue of BizEd, a magazine published by the Association to Advance Collegiate School of Business (AACSB). Here you will find only a portion of the interview. To read the full piece, please visit http://www.aacsb.edu/publications/archives/JulAug08/16-21%20Uniting%20Nations.pdf

This meeting brought together Global Compact business participants from 13 countries, representatives of civil society, labor, business associations, Global Compact Local Networks and international organizations as well as the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Transparency International (TI) and the World Economic Forum/Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (WEF/PACI) to discuss the revitalization of companies’ efforts to implement the 10^th Principle of the UN Global Compact and report on such efforts...

“Supporting Entrepreneurs for Sustainable Development” – the SEED Initiative – is pleased to announce the inspiring ventures which have been selected as finalists for the 2008 SEED Awards for Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Development. The SEED Initiative is a global network for action on sustainable development partnerships, founded by IUCN, UNEP and UNDP, to deliver concrete progress towards the internationally-agreed, aspirational goals in the UN’s Millennium Declaration and the commitments made at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002...

The United Nations and an increasing number of non-governmental organizations around the world are coming to grips with the fact that vast amounts of money can be wasted if not utilized through best practices. Parallel to this is the realization that best practices most often do not devolve from the top down, but rather are best built organically and honed from the ground up. The United Nation’s Development Programme (UNDP) has begun initiatives that not only acknowledge this reality, but also attempt to celebrate and learn from its individual entities. One of the forays into locating the best-of-the-best of these is the UNDP’s Equator Prize...

Joining the Business Call to Action, a dozen companies announced concrete initiatives that apply core business expertise, utilizing their technology and innovative spirit to tackle the multiple challenges of poverty. The new initiative is spawned from UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown who made a Call to Action to governments, businesses, NGOs and faith-based groups to focus resources and effort on delivering the MDGs by 2015...

In the last issue of the UN-Business Focal Point Newsletter we brought you our first “Sustainable Entrepreneur Profile” of Mr. Phil LaRocco and his company E+Co which provides sustainable energy solutions to African communities. In this issue, we interview Mr. Farouk Jiwa, Co-Founder and Director of HoneyCare, a company focusing on the sustainable production of honey in Africa...

This paper provides a fictionalized account of a real partnership between a UN agency and a multi-national company. In spite of great optimism at the start of the relationship and the exemplary dedication of a core group of staff in both institutions, the partnership, as originally conceived, was unable to maintain its creative momentum and the partners eventually felt they had no choice but to adopt a more conventional focus for their collaborative activities. This case study seeks to explore what key relationship factors impacted the partnership’s development and contributed to its inability to work in the hoped-for manner...

This publication briefly summarizes UNDP’s various initiatives, including Growing Sustainable Business (GSB), Growing Inclusive Markets (GIM), programs to mitigate climate change such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and its work in facilitating Global Compact local networks...

Business knows that "what gets measured gets done." In this spirit, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), together with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), launched the "Measuring Impact Framework" to help companies measure and assess the impact of their business activities on economic and broader development goals wherever they operate...