The World Economic Forum Jobs Reset Summit brought together world leaders and top business executives to collaborate on shaping a fair, inclusive, green socio-economic COVID-19 recovery. In 2020, the global workforce lost an equivalent of 255 million full-time jobs, $3.7 trillion in wages and 4.4% of global GDP. While the growth outlook is expected in improve, a fair socio-economic recovery is not guaranteed.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s Jobs Reset Summit on Tuesday, Crescent Enterprises CEO Badr Jafar has called for the creation of a Gulf Corporate Philanthropy Network to encourage all businesses to embrace the transformative power of strategic corporate giving, as businesses across the region and the world play a leadership role in the post-pandemic economic recovery.
Badr Jafar, who also founded the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at the University of Cambridge, said: “Beyond the ill-effects on the pandemic, it provided many with an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the status quo in relation to the role of business in society, with a greater acceptance of the notion that business really has no other choice but to be at the forefront of addressing our social and environmental challenges.”
“This is not simply a moral imperative, but a commercial one, with inextricable links between long-term economic success and positive societal impact,” Jafar added.
The session A New Vision for Business Leadership for Social Justice and was joined by other speakers including Sharon Thorne, Global Chair of Deloitte, Ebony Beckwith, CEO of Salesforce Foundation, Jacqueline Fuller, President of Google.org, Asahi Pompey, President of Goldman Sachs Foundation, and Jonas Prising, Chairman and CEO of Manpower Group.
“For too long, philanthropy has been treated like the neglected child of capitalism. It is seen by too many as a peripheral concern, and even viewed in some parts of the world with suspicion. The reality is that well over a trillion of dollars of private philanthropic capital, more than triple the annual global development and humanitarian aid budgets combined, is deployed every year. We must not squander the opportunity to deploy this capital strategically, to where it is needed the most and with maximum impact” Jafar said.
It is estimated more than 10 percent of working hours in the Middle East region were lost in the second and third quarter of 2020 due to COVID, equivalent to 24 million full time jobs. The session addressed the urgent need for businesses to work together to alleviate the socio-economic impact of these job losses and coordinate their responses.
