Realizing a Sustainable Future: Public-Private Partnerships
VIEW EVENT DETAILSLight Lunch Presentation
Registration: 11:30am
Presentation: 11:45am
Light Lunch: 12:30pm
Close: 1:00pm
The global community has made a life-changing promise to the world’s children. By agreeing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, all of us are committed to end poverty, fix climate change and tackle inequalities by 2030. However, at the current rate of progress, every single sustainable development goal will be missed, and with failure, we will let down a generation of children. We need to get to work. Governments will need to step up and commit to increase development assistance to reach the world’s most vulnerable, excluded or marginalized children who desperately need the kind of generational change envisioned in the global goals. However, this alone will not be enough. To succeed, we will also need the strong support of the private sector, scaling up existing partnerships for sustainable development and creating new and dynamic ones. As Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children International and former Prime Minister of Denmark explains in this presentation, partnering to achieve the sustainable development goals should not be viewed as a trade-off for the private sector in terms of moral and corporate responsibility but as an extraordinary new opportunity.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt is Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children International which has 25,000 staff and an annual budget in excess of US$2 billion. She oversees humanitarian and development programs that directly reach 55 million children in around 120 countries every year. Formerly Denmark's prime minister, Ms. Thorning-Schmidt led a coalition government from 2011 until 2015. She was a Member of Parliament and Leader of the Social Democratic Party for 10 years and a Member of the European Parliament. Throughout her career she has tackled significant national and global issues, specifically with regards to children’s rights, and has been recognized for her commitment to helping children fulfil their potential by ensuring access to quality education. Ms. Thorning-Schmidt was invited by the UN General Secretary to be a Global Education Champion to promote the Global Education First Initiative. She has a master’s degree in political science from the University of Copenhagen and a master’s degree in European studies from the College of Europe in Bruges.