Prospect wins funding for Millennium Development Goals project

Prospect wins funding for Millennium Development Goals project

Prospect, the union for scientists, engineers, managers and other professionals, has been awarded £190,400 from the Department for International Development's Development Awareness Fund to finance a project to make international development a bargaining issue over the next three years.

Commenting on the award, Prospect's international development co-ordinator Beverley Hall said: 'This funding will help us build a project we undertook last year to raise awareness of the corporate social responsibility agenda.

'This showed that a growing number of our members have a real appetite to change workplace practices on international development. Awareness is spreading of how issues like poverty and hunger link closely with the environment and tackling global warming. People want to get involved and this funding will help immensely.'

The new project will:

? work with employers to achieve corporate social responsibility (CSR) polices linked to achieving the United Nations' eight millennium development goals.

? help members and reps encourage employers to develop practical actions like selling fairtrade products in the workplace, donating old computers or assembling scientific equipment for developing countries.

? recruit and train a network of development champions to spread best practice.

By the end of the three years, Prospect aims to engage at least 30 workplaces in new CSR activity. Six pilot schemes will provide models for others to follow; three will support members in using their practical expertise to help projects in developing countries while the other three will build model CSR policies, focusing on the practices of employers and supply chains.

Prospect's bid was based on earlier project work, made possible with financial assistance and advice provided by the TUC under its Strategic Framework Partnership Arrangement.