Aspirations Education Joins the United Nations Global Compact

Aspirations Education is a proud signatory of the United Nations Global Compact and is the only educational organization in Sri Lanka to be a part of this global network. UN Global Compact is a leadership initiative of United Nations pioneered by Former Secretary General Kofi Annan where organizations from around the world have rallied under the UN banner to promote good business practices and corporate social responsibility projects.

Deepamala Abeysekera , General Manager , Aspirations Education with UN Secretary -General Ban Ki-moon, at the 63rd UN General Assembly, October 08

The Ten Principles
The UN Global Compact’s ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption

The Global Compact offers a policy framework for the development, implementation, and disclosure of sustainability principles and practices related to its four core areas: human rights, labour, the environment, and anti-corruption. The Global Compact requests companies to embrace support and enact, within their sphere of influence, these core values.

From the time of inception, Aspirations Education has been committed to meet the growing demand for guidance and counselling for higher studies. Career Guidance and Placement Services are quite common business centres in SL, but what was critically needed was a comprehensive career guidance service with the students’ interests at heart. Our organizational culture is based on the Global Compact’s Principles and all our services to students are offered absolutely free of charge in the most ethical manner.

Deepamala Abeysekera , General Manager , Aspirations Education with Georg Kell , Executive Director , United Nations Global Compact at the Global Forum for Responsible Managment Education, UN Headquarters, New York,5 December 08

Aspirations Education Foundation and Apeksha Scholarship Scheme
Supporting Labour standards in The International Labour Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, Aspirations in its sphere of influence is doing their best to eliminate child labour by helping students to realize the right to education. In this regard, Aspirations Education launched the Apeksha scholarship programme to help students of low-income groups who are deprived of even the basic necessities to follow an uninterrupted school career in Sri Lanka, let alone pursuing education abroad. At present, 115 deserving students from 15 Districts including Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Trincomalee, Ampara etc. are awarded monthly scholarships. They would be receiving the monthly payment until their school career comes to an end, provided they maintain reasonable academic standards. This is a first step Aspirations has taken in doing its part in realizing the Millennium Development Goal of achieving universal primary education. As such, by receiving our professional services absolutely free of charge, students who can afford to go abroad will effortlessly and routinely be helping their own brethren who are less fortunate.

National Entrepreneurship Week Sri Lanka 2008 (NEW 08) - Exhibition Partner and Strategic Dialogue
Another Millennium Development Goal of the UN is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, defining the objectives as achieving full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people. UN Global Compact encourages companies to develop Partnership Projects to contribute to the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals. In line with the Global Compact’s vision, Aspirations Education (Pvt) Ltd., along with its CSR arm, Aspirations Education Foundation, joined hands with British Council in organizing the National Entrepreneurship Week Sri Lanka 2008 (NEW 08). As the strategic partner in the Enterprise Education Exhibition, we got industries from Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) to large scale enterprises and universities across Sri Lanka to put up stalls and display their enterprise related activities, innovative products, services and success stories. We also initiated strategic dialogue, parallel to the exhibition, among the corporate community, academia and students, with the aim of coming up with a short and long term action plan to address the acute unemployment problem and the deficiency of entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka. The objective was to explore means of influencing the soft-skill development and employability of the students of Sri Lanka.

This was done keeping in mind that the United Nations Global Compact encourages signatories to the compact to facilitate dialogues on issues related to the Compact Principles, responsible corporate citizenship and the advancement of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals. Dialogue related to employment and entrepreneurship initiated by Aspirations will serve as an engagement platform for participants, to move innovative solutions to the level of implementation.

Pathbreakers – Educations based TV Reality Show
UN Global Compact encourages the value creation that can simultaneously benefit the private sector and societies at large. Aspirations broke new ground with its innovative initiative in pioneering two education-based TV programmes for undergraduates and school-goers above 15 years viz Pathbreakers Season 1 and Season 2 respectively. It is a show where students are given the opportunity to showcase their intelligence, innate talents as well as enhance leadership qualities and their spirit of teamwork. The primary objective of organising an innovative show of this magnitude was to add value to a student’s education, personality and employability.

As such, the UN Global Compact and its principles have become a part of strategy, culture and day-to-day operations of Aspirations. Being an establishment of high integrity, ours is a widely visible commitment to the implementation, disclosure, and promotion of the UN Global Compact’s ten universal principles throughout our operations and sphere of influence.

Ms Deepamala Abeysekera , General Manager , Aspiraiotns Education with Mr. Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General , Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) , UN Headquarters, New York, June 08