Our Bridge 47 consortium partner, the Irish Development Education Association (IDEA), leads on the pioneering work with the private sector in Ireland.

IDEA’s engagement in the private sector partnership has resulted in new collaborations with Deloitte Ireland. Together they delivered a Global Citizenship Education (GCE) workshop on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for their staff as part of Deloitte’s community-focused ‘Impact Week’ in October 2020. Based on the positive feedback, IDEA and Deloitte teamed up again for two further workshops for over 100 new staff in December 2020 with Development Perspectives for Deloitte's induction programme. Through these workshops, Deloitte staff members experienced GCE methodologies that enabled them to reflect and think critically about SDG-related issues and explore opportunities for action in business and personal contexts.

Here is a message from Claire Sinnott, Deloitte’s Corporate Responsibility Senior who has worked closely with IDEA.

“Following a successful session as part of Impact Week, we invited the IDEA/Bridge 47 team back to facilitate two more sessions with our group of incoming Audit graduates. Impact Week is an annual event that gives us the opportunity to educate and inspire our people to find and activate their purpose through transformative days of speeches, panel discussions, networking and workshops. It is really important to us that employees get a sense of Deloitte’s commitment to corporate responsibility and the firm’s purpose to make an impact in the community early in their career with us and understand how they can make a difference through their role. We felt that Ji and the team could help deliver this message with us through GCE focusing on the SDGs.

In Deloitte, we have used the SDGs to benchmark our Corporate Responsibility activity to ensure that our agenda and programmes are aligned to achieving the 2030 Goals. The SDGs also align to Deloitte’s global WorldClass initiative which aims to prepare 50 million futures for a world of opportunity by 2030. Here in Ireland, we are committed to preparing 180,000 futures for a world of opportunity to play our part in this global commitment. Through our volunteering programmes, we commit to investing time in education, skills building and access to opportunity. We do this through our work with charities which allow our people to positively contribute to their local communities.

The SDG workshops provide great context to the work we’re doing and they are also a fun and engaging way to challenge our staff to think more deeply about issues such as inequality and poverty. The IDEA/Bridge 47 team are passionate and really care about providing a bespoke session, weaving in relevant examples of our own projects for our people to get the full benefit of the session. I attended all three sessions myself and each one was different and applicable to the audience attending. I’d also like to highlight that these sessions all took place in a virtual setting, adding extra considerations and challenges in terms of providing an engaging session. The feedback from our people has been excellent. A total of 140 participants over the three sessions gave a rating 4.9 out of 5 stars. Going forward, we hope to work with the team again as we roll out more sessions across the firm, inviting them to take part in our Environmental Impact Week.

As a Corporate Responsibility professional, the sessions always leave me with a renewed sense of purpose and reminder of why this agenda is so important for businesses to get right. I am hugely passionate about the potential business holds to make a positive impact in our society and empowering our people to get involved in that ambition. The sessions have also provided me with some great resources and learning materials to support my own role in educating our people. Thanks to all the fantastic IDEA/Bridge 47 team!”

Another Deloitte staff, Hannah O'Keeffe who attended the first SDG workshop, also wrote a blog sharing her experience and learning. Check out her blog here.