Young Professionals Program

Team 1 (2017-2018)

One of the two first YPP-teams that participated in the pilot phase of the YPP focused their project on SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production.

The team made a deep dive on the issue of Food Waste. Each year, an estimated one third of all food produced – equivalent to 1.3 billion tonnes worth around $1 trillion – ends up rotting in the bins of consumers and retailers, or spoiling due to poor transportation and harvesting practices.

Their final deliverable was an impactful Global Waste Dinner to raise awareness around this important issue. The event took place at the Heineken Experience in Amsterdam. With inspiring speakers like Ron Simpson of the Avocado Show and Maurits Groen van Kipster and a dinner made of food waste served on signs of Amsterdam rejected trees. And in collaboration with BrightVibes the YPP-team created online content to further increase awareness!”

Team 2 (2017-2018)

In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for a safer, cleaner and more prosperous world by 2030. The second YPP-team that kicked off in 2017 decided to generate greater awareness about the SDG agenda and get everyone involved. The YPP-team created a board game that has been developed for companies throughout the world, to be played by managers and employees in all positions at all levels. To learn about the SDGs in a light-hearted and competitive way.

The YPP-team was responsible for content development and for the game dynamics in close collaboration with the company ‘Identity Games International BV’. The YPP-team tested the first versions of the SDG Game with stakeholder groups (nationally and internationally) and learned how to improve the SDG Game with the feedback given by these stakeholders. The SDG Game was finally produced by Identity Games International BV and financed by Global Compact Network Netherlands.

Team 3 (2018-2019)

Within the UN Global Compact, the world’s largest sustainability initiative, businesses and their stakeholders join forces with the United Nations to create a world that is more sustainable and socially equitable. In this enormous global network of private and public organizations millions of young professionals are active. But how involved are these highly talented future leaders with UN Global Compact, the Ten Principles and the SDGs? And how could the involvement of the upcoming leaders with the SDG agenda be further stimulated and activated?

The YPP-team that started their leadership journey in 2018 did thorough research and discovered that there is a huge potential to engage and involve the next generation of leaders actively. The YPP-team developed a vison document to set-up a global movement of young professionals under the flag and umbrella of UN Global Compact. At the international Local Networks meetings of UN Global Compact in Dubrovnik and in Copenhagen they presented their plan to create a global SDG Young Leaders Network. The first step forward is that UN Global Compact created and launched the SDG Young Innovators Programme in 2019. And in 2020 a SDG Young Leaders Board was formed and formally installed within the governance structure of Global Compact Network Netherlands.

Team 4 (2019-2020)

The last YPP-team that participated in the pilot phase of the YPP focused their project on the SDG Ambition. SDG Ambition is an accelerator initiative that aims to challenge and support participating companies of the UN Global Compact in setting ambitious corporate targets and accelerating integration of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into core business management. The need for SDG Ambition today is clear. The world is not delivering progress towards the SDGs at the pace and scale needed. 

The YPP-team decided in the second phase of their learning journey to organize an inspiring virtual event for young professionals. An event from young professionals for young professionals, with the slogan: ‘Get Involved, Get Inspired, Take Action!’ The aim of the event was to help and inspire young professionals to draw up their personal SDG Ambition. The YPP-team wanted to enable young professionals like themselves to learn more about the SDGs, understand how they can contribute best to the goal of their choice, hence translate their ambition into daily work and projects, involving their colleagues and management.

Team 5 – Listen Up (2020-2021)

The Listen Up team is going to deliver an inspiring Podcast. Listen Up is a short podcast series about making great choices for a better future. How can we as individuals all make a little bit of a difference in our daily lives to contribute to a healthy, fair and sustainable planet? We are all consumers and we can make choices in our household, in the supermarkets and shops, online, in the way we travel to work or are going on holiday, how we use energy, produce waste or try to reduce our individual footprint. Listen Up is trying to find answers.

Although most people want to make fair choices and contribute to a better and sustainable world, it is not easy. Not easy at all. Making great choices for a sustainable future seems to go along with dilemmas. As individuals we are often confronted with the dilemma for example between the citizen and the consumer. As a citizen you are convinced that sustainability is the right way forward. But as a consumer you seem to make total different choices. Choices that are not in line with what the citizen in you is convinced about.

So you often have to make difficult choices as consumer, as professional, as family member. In these defining moments it shows if you really want to change something or that you will stick to your traditional lifestyle and choices. So if you want to make a difference, really go for individual change than be inspired and Listen Up!

Team 6 – Tiny Forest (2020-2021)

This team of young professionals has set out on a mission to address climate change, biodiversity and the heating issue in urban areas in a tangible way. Partnering with Netherlands-based organisation for nature education, IVN, the team has the goal of planting a Tiny Forest this year, and applying learnings from that experience to collaborate with IVN and develop a corporate strategy: Tiny Forest for Business. To inspire Dutch companies to become a partner and join the Tiny Forest for business movement.

The Tiny Forest concept was initially developed by Shubhendu Sharma (TED Talk: Tiny Forest), and was then adopted by IVN, with the first Tiny Forest being planted in the Netherlands in 2015. Tiny Forests are densely packed native forests, about the size of a tennis court, and can deliver significant benefits to the surrounding community and environment. They boost biodiversity, increase CO₂ uptake, improve local water management, and regulate temperatures. And they’re good for people. As well as giving people the chance to be closer to nature, there are also numerous health and educational benefits.

Check back here later this year to see our results!

Team 7 – Green Gurus (2020-2021)

YPP team 7 aims to activate consumers to contribute to SDG #12: Responsible Consumption and to SDG #13: Climate Action. Our problem statement points out the gap between perception and the actual practice of sustainable consumption; people -generally- know about irresponsible consumption patterns and their impact on climate, but lack practice in acting sustainably.

As the team we want to achieve this by implementing a project which incentivizes the participants to act in line with this perception through a 100k Actions Challenge. The purpose of this challenge is to empower consumers to be the most sustainable version of their self and measure all the impact participants of the challenge make. In order to realize this, the AWorld app is used. This app will guide consumers towards living sustainably every day through taking actions. Examples of actions are eating a plant-based meal or taking a 5-minute shower. Through participation, participants get the opportunity to learn about the SDG’s, receive tips and tricks on living a sustainable lifestyle, and join a community of like-minded people. Together, we aim for 100k actions.

Our team consist of young professionals from seven different companies, including Albert Heijn, Shell and Rabobank, which gives us a strong network to collaborate with and implement in our project.

Team 8 – Top Gear (2020-2021)

In 2020, Global Compact facilitated a study on current best practices in stakeholder engagement. The result of this study was a report and model on stakeholder inclusion as an accelerator for the SDGs. Stakeholder engagement can help to accelerate the SDGs and allow better alignment of a company’s long-term strategies with social goals.

The goal of the study was to provide a useful tool and new handholds for companies to increase their role in the world and use stakeholder engagement to achieve the SDGs. The model is divided into 6 aspects of engagement, with four gears per aspect to denote the level of engagement a company has reached. These gears extend from the legal minimum (lowest gear, gear 1) to stewardship, partnerships and impact motivation (highest gear, gear 4).

As team Top Gear, we aim to add to this study and model by studying the model and researching how companies in Global Compact NL view stakeholder engagement through interviews. We want to spread the knowledge of this model and make it usable for companies in Global Compact, so that they can use it to map their own stakeholder engagement and have handholds on how to move up in the gears. By embedding stakeholders’ legitimate interests into their decision-making processes, companies can create long term value and contribute to all the SDGs. Read more about the workshop they created.

Team  9 – Life Below Water (2021-2022)

The ocean covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. It contains about 1.35 billion cubic kilometers of water, which is about 97 percent of all the water on Earth. The ocean makes all life on Earth possible. At the same time, our oceans are under immense pressure from human activity. Megatrends such as overfishing, plastic pollution, and ocean warming now threaten all life in our oceans, which could lead to the collapse of the ecosystem as a whole. Despite its significance, only a fraction of philanthropic funding goes towards ocean conservation. And for donors who do provide funding through traditional channels and organizations to projects, there is often a lack of transparency and measurable impact. YPP and underwater photographer Vincent Kneefel have joined forces to increase the volume, speed, efficiency, and transparency of funding flowing to ocean impact projects.

TheOcean.org works to accelerate the transition to a blue economy and to build a future where ocean health regenerates. TheOcean.org provides donors and business partners the opportunity to purchase block-chain-enabled credits to offset their footprint. We do this by building an end-to-end, blockchain-enabled, platform that enables private and company donors to get insight into where their funding is going and what impact it has achieved. TheOcean.org then uses the funds to fund impactful projects with a wide ecosystem of partners around the world. The entire process is verified by third-party auditors. To ensure full accountability, transparency, and traceability, all credits and offsets are registered in TheOcean.org’s public blockchain ledger.

As part of the YPP team’s assignment, they created a strategy/pitch deck to attract funding for the development of the platform. Click here to view the deck

Team  10 – Class B-est (2022-2023)

At the beginning of 2022, YPP team 10 came together and decided to contribute towards SDG 12.3.

More specifically SDG 12.3 which by 2030 seeks to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.

Team Class B-est (referring to the “class B” food that is now wasted) found out through their research that a significant percentage of food is being wasted at production level both in the Netherlands and globally. One of the main reasons was that this “class B” food could not be sold to supermarkets. This food is then wasted or used for purposes other than human consumption. The goal was set to reduce the percentage of this food waste and help foundations or the less fortunate in the process.

During the year, the team realized that the project was too ambitious for a one year program and swiftly changed actions while keeping in mind the original goal of the project. This decision came after engaging with experts, ranging from farmers to policy makers and supermarkets to academia, which uncovered some of the complexities around food loss.

Team B-est therefore decided to host two interactive round table discussions, bringing together key stakeholders to discuss the challenges and (collaborative) opportunities to reduce food loss. The first discussion was for producers of (open land) produce, and the second for the customer of these producers. The findings from the virtual roundtables served as input for a report, which was presented during a physical event to the Food and Agriculture Ministry (NL) and other key stakeholders. The event, which attracted over 100 participants, provided a platform for experts to discuss viable solutions, meeting our goal to end the event with participants committing to making a step forward to reducing overproduction and the loss of class B produce.