SAI Advisory Board Meeting Convenes in California
5-year strategic planning meeting provides direction for future SAI endeavors and moves to enhance the reliability and overall impact of SA8000 through a new Social Fingerprint application process.
On November 12-14, SAI convened its semi-annual multi-stakeholder Advisory Board meeting hosted by the Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California. This meeting was devoted to outlining the main elements in our 5-year strategic plan. The focus for the next 5 years include:
- Impact Evaluation
- Stakeholder Relations - Deeper Engagement with Unions, Governments, and Civil Society. Worker Engagement - Exploration of Additional Ways to Engage Workers in SAI's Work
- Capacity Building - Central Role of High Impact Enabling Programs like Social Fingerprint Rapid Results 100 day project
- Role of Convener - Facilitating the Sharing of Best Practices Among Corporations and other Stakeholders
- Issues Expertise, e.g. Living Wage
Further explorations of these strategic objectives will be provided as a series through the SAI newsletter.
Additionally, the meeting approved tying SAI's Social Fingerprint program to SA8OOO, formally integrating SAI's capacity-building "Measure & Improve" approach as the application path for certification to SA8OOO.
This planning work was accompanied by a review of scheduled revisions and updates proposed for the SA8OOO standard. The draft will be open for public consultation this winter. We heartily welcome your review and comment!
Board members welcomed the participation of two new Advisory Board members and of SAAS board member, Laura Rubbo, Director, Corporate Citizenship, International Labor Standards (ILS) at the Walt Disney Company. Ms. Rubbo and Disney generously hosted the event at their beautiful facilities in Burbank, CA.
In attendance at the meeting were Advisory Board members Amy Hall, Eileen Fisher; Margaret Jungk, Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR); Ivano Corraini, Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL); David Zwiebel, National Child labor Committee; Darryl Knudsen, Gap Inc.; Dorianne Beyer, National Child Labor Committee; Olga Orozco, Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI); Andreas Streubig, OTTO Group; Helio Mattar, Akatu Institute for Conscious Consumption; Sunil Bhaskaran, Tata Steel Limited; Achim Lohrie, Tchibo GmbH; Chris Willie, Rainforest Alliance; Alice Tepper Marlin, Social Accountability International. They were joined by guest Laura Rubbo, the Walt Disney Company; facilitator Mary Watson, The New School; SAAS Executive Director Rochelle Zaid; and SAI staff Jane Hwang, Michelle Bhattacharyya, and Alex Katz.
For more information, contact SAI Director of Operations, Michelle Bhattacharyya - MBhattacharyya@sa-intl.org.
