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Leadership course to bring professional edge and results to good causes
HONG KONG, Saturday 19 August 2006 – Young executives from leading Hong Kong corporations and university students are embarking on a project to help mainland Chinese farmers turn their crops into community wealth that can build them a sustainable future.

Executives from the MTR Corporation, Hongkong Electric, diversified group Shui On, and Gammon Construction are joining students from the Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Polytechnic Universities in the very first Global Young Leaders Programme (YLP).

The YLP is an innovative, practicable start-up programme addressing critical leadership needs for future decision-makers. It has been designed and developed by Hong Kong-based organisation the Global Institute For Tomorrow to influence a fundamental shift in the understanding of business, its influence and impacts, by engaging participants in life-changing field projects.

The field project is the second module of the YLP. Module 1 introduced the participants to examine issues in ways that are often omitted from management training courses and handbooks, but that are critical to both everyday and long-term decision making. Leaders must understand the impacts of globalisation, issues of governance, business ethics, the role of civil society, corporate social responsibility, and diversity, among many others, to be effective in our global community.

In this first YLP field project, the young leaders are bringing their new-found understanding of issues discussed in Module 1 with their own business acumen to two villages in Baoshan prefecture in western Yunnan over nine days.

“The Young Leaders Programme is an attempt to fill a gap in executive education that is all too evident in our fast-paced world and at the same time to bring business problem-solving skills and discipline to addressing development issues: a convergence of business knowledge and skills with good causes,” says GIFT founder and chief executive Chandran Nair.

“It’s also about bringing to the decision makers of society and our business community a different sense of perspective, an idea of how their decisions can effect people and places that are entirely out of sight and out of mind – these are real people and real places – and how they can in the decisions that they make help to make society more equitable.”

The outcome of the Yunnan project is to be a business model that the villages working with NGOs, government officials and other stakeholders can apply to improve their livelihoods, and which will sustain and build on their resources. At the core of this inaugural project are economic empowerment and the crops grown – including herbs, mushrooms, and medicinal plants – for which a sustainable business model will help overcome challenges in the cultivation, marketing, and supply chain.

There are 28 participants in all heading to Yunnan to work with local authorities and organisations, a non-governmental organisation, and representatives of Pingzhang and Haitang Administrative villages.

The organisations supporting and lending expertise to this field project are: the Kunming Institute of Botany; the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF); and the Organic Food Development Center of China. Film and media post-graduates from the PolyU are to document the field project.

About GIFT : www.globalinstitutefortomorrow.org/
GIFT is an independent social venture think tank dedicated to advancing understanding of the impacts of globalisation.

Further information about GIFT and details of the YLP prospectus can be found at the above Internet address.

About ICRAF : www.worldagroforestrycentre.org/
The World Agroforestry Centre works to advance the science and practice of agroforestry to transform the lives and landscapes of the rural poor in developing countries. Its aims to encourage smallholder rural households to use working trees on working landscapes to help ensure security in food, nutrition, income, health, shelter and energy and a regenerated environment.

About the Kunming Institute of Botany : www.kib.ac.cn/
The Kunming Institute of Botany carries out comprehensive multi-disciplinary research on the biodiversity and bioresources of subtropical broad-leaved forests and Himalayan sub-alpine vegetation. It studies regional and global botanical and social-economic development in mountain areas.

About the Organic Food Development Center : www.ofdc.org.cn/
Organic Food Development Center is China’s oldest and largest specialised organic research, inspection and certification organisation. Under the auspices of SEPA, the State Environmental Protection Agency, the OFDC promotes organic farming to encourage rural environmental protection, structural optimisation of agriculture, poverty alleviation, and the sustainable development of agriculture.

CONTACT:
The Global Institute For Tomorrow
Chandran Nair
Founder and chief executive
Ph: (852) 3571 8103
Cell: (852) 9171 3981

Thomas Tang
Managing director
Ph: (852) 3571 8104
Cell: (852) 9160 7595

Suite 1002 Two Pacific Place
88 Queensway, Admiralty, Hong Kong
Phone: (852) 3571 8103
Fax: (852) 3585 3910

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