WE ARE SOLDOUT

Days
Hrs
Mins
Secs

Blog

Coca-Cola’s Stuart Hawkins Talks Water and Women

By

Stuart Hawkins

Share

As I prepare to attend and speak at the AVPN Conference in Bangkok next month I have been thinking about our sustainability journey at Coca-Cola, the progress we’ve been making together with our partners and the opportunity to deepen the impact in the years ahead. Our sustainability partnerships focus on two priority areas: water replenishment and the economic empowerment of women entrepreneurs. These are areas of crucial importance to our business and to the communities in which we do business. It’s been a great experience being involved in these initiatives over many years. We’ve been working towards some ambitious goals in both of these areas and our partnership efforts continue to gain momentum.

Water Replenishment

Through community water projects in dozens of countries around the world, Coca-Cola has achieved its 100 percent water replenishment goal.

Water is essential to the sustainability of our business as a beverage company and essential to communities and ecosystems everywhere. I remember the day back in June 2007 that we announced our aspirational goal of replenishing – or balancing – all the water we use. We have made significant progress since then. Indeed, it was with a sense of pride that we announced during Stockholm World Water Week last August that we have now exceeded our global water replenishment goal – five years ahead of target! That means that we are now returning to communities and nature more water than we use in our global sales volume. We’re doing this through hundreds of community water programs in dozens of countries around the world. Here in ASEAN, we have community water programs up and running in eight countries in collaboration with government and NGO partners. These programs have provided sustainable access to water to over 850,000 people across Southeast Asia to date and we’re committed to doing more.

Women’s Economic Empowerment

Coca-Cola’s 5by20 initiative is providing access to business skills training, resources, and peer mentoring to women micro-retailers across the Philippines and now expanding across ASEAN.

At the same time, we’re working hard towards our “5by20” goal of enabling the economic empowerment of five million women entrepreneurs across our global value chain by the year 2020. We have also been making good progress, reaching more than 1.7 million women across 64 countries since the launch of this initiative in 2010. Here in Asia, the Philippines has been a global 5by20 lead market since 2011, empowering over 80,000 women micro-retailers to date in a widely-recognised partnership program that provides business skills training, access to financial services and assets, peer networks and mentoring. The Coca-Cola team in the Philippines have done a fantastic job working with government and civil society partners to build this program over the years and we’re continuing to expand the reach and impact of this program in the Philippines and across Southeast Asia. It has been so inspiring to meet the women who have graduated from this training program and hear their stories and the difference it has made in their lives.

We’ve seen that women empowerment is good for business and good for economic and social progress and so we plan to accelerate our efforts to empower women both inside and outside of our workplace. Within our workplace, we’ve been on a journey to attract, retain and develop more female talent into roles of increasing responsibility. Outside our workplace, we’re working to create more opportunities for women entrepreneurs by expanding the impact of 5by20. Here in Southeast Asia, we first launched 5by20 in the Philippines and we are now expanding this initiative to Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. We’ve had a very positive response to this initiative across the region and we’re committed to taking this program to the next level over the coming years. That means staying in perpetual learning mode and fine-tuning our approach as necessary. Released in celebration of International Women’s Day 2017, this video provides a snapshot of what Coca-Cola is working to achieve with 5by20.

I am looking forward to being part of the dialogue on this subject at the upcoming AVPN Conference 2017 and hearing what others are doing in this area so we can learn from their experience.

Stuart will be speaking at the “Growing Women Entrepreneurship to Fuel Social Change and Economic Growth”, on 9th June, Friday.

References

A. Environmental Stewardship
To protect the environment, we organize programmes like mangrove nursery and Reforestation, Coastal and River Clean-Up, Community Based Environmental Solid Waste Management, Environmental IEC Campaign and Eco-Academy

B. Food Security and Sustainable Livelihood
To ensure a sustainable livelihood for the community, eco-tourism include Buhatan River Cruise Visitor Center Buhatan River Mangrove Boardwalk are run by the community. Others include Organic Vegetable and Root crops Farming, Vegetable and Root crops Chips and by-products Processing and establishing a Zero waste store.

C. Empowered Communities
To empower the community, we provide product and Agri-Enterprise Development Training, Immersion and Learnings Exchange Program, Earth Warrior Training and Community Based Social Entrepreneurship Training

Author

Stuart Hawkins

Stuart Hawkins has been with The Coca-Cola Company since 1998. He joined Coca-Cola in the companyâ??s Middle and Far East Group public affairs team in Hong Kong, working with colleagues in over 60 countries. In 2005, he was seconded from Coca-Cola to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Centre in Bangkok in a unique one-year assignment to lead and manage a partnership with UNDP and the UN Foundation focused on water and sanitation reconstruction activities in tsunami-impacted countries. After this assignment, he headed up Public Affairs & Communications for Coca-Cola Thailand during which time he developed and launched a number of flagship sustainability programs with government and civil society partners such as the RAKNAM (Love Water) initiative that continues to reach communities nationwide. He currently leads the companyâ??s sustainability and social impact strategy, programs and partnerships across Southeast Asia. Stuart holds a Master of Arts degree in Modern History from Oxford University, England.

Did you enjoy reading this?

You might also be interested in

Blog

Tackling Hong Kong’s Double Crisis: A Case Study on Bridging the Funding Gap

Blog

Need for Increased Focus on Climate Adaptation in South Asia and Sea

Blog

Rooftop Republic Creating a Green Sky City and Nurturing a High-End Farming Lifestyle to Urbanities