How do you become an action-oriented world citizen? How can you, as a business or individual, boost a positive development process? These are some of the main subjects of the educational courses that Sociability has developed for various educational institutions.
Sociability strives to empower and to create a space where participants become aware of having the opportunity to act and take action themselves. A space where one unleashes innovative thoughts and has the courage to go out and create change.
Gyldendal and Copenhagen Business School (CBS)
Elizabeth Boye, the founder of Sociability, is an external lecturer and course coordinator of a course about the involvement of the private sector in development interventions at CBS. She has also developed the education program ‘Global value chains’ for Gyldendal’s teaching portal, which is aimed at grades 8–10 and high schools 3rd G, A-level for social science. With reference to the 17 sustainable development goals, the students learn how economic dispositions in global value chains have adverse impacts on stakeholders along the value chains for garments, smartphones, soy, vegetables and king prawns.
The value chain as an analytical framework
The program is developed to make the students explore and analyse the impacts of things we use on a daily basis on economics, people and the environment across the globe. Studying the whole journey of the production of the clothes we wear, smartphones we use, or food we eat gives an “Aha!” experience and helps students understand that their own actions and consumption patterns have consequences that extend far beyond national borders and understand the responsibility of both public and private actors that governs the global trade.
Here you can read about some of the educational courses that Sociability is behind:
1. CBS – Management Society and Communication, Center for Business and Development
Based on specific cases from Sociability, the students learn how making the most of corporate social responsibility can contribute to sustainable development. We deal with issues such as the role of the private sector in global, national and regional development and how to create a positive development within the private sector. It allows the student to create socially responsible business models and gain the skills to engage in productive collaborations between public, private and civil society sectors.
2. Danida Fellowship Center
Sociability has already trained over 600 high level decision makers, of whom approximately 400 have been educated in the auspices of the Danida Fellowship Center. Here the assignment was to prepare decision makers in Danida’s partner organizations to create socially responsible development through strategic CSR and public–private partnerships.
3. Gyldendal
Based on five cases, we send students on a journey around the world so that they understand and are encouraged to act on conditions that relate to their own lives; for example, how we produce T-shirts, smartphones, etc. One thing is whether they understand the effect of their own consumption, another important thing is to understand their role as world citizens and change agents.
4. BGMEA – University for Fashion and Technology (BUFT)
Sociability has also strengthened teaching as well as research competences at BUFT with a focus on a socially responsible business development in the clothing and textile industry in Bangladesh.