Seasons’ greetings to all readers! This newsletter is an opportunity to reflect on the year and look forward to the next one.
2014 has been another year of good development in all areas of our agenda:
· It has seen the addition of three new members - Creative Werks, Cargill and Verallia, taking our overall membership to 39 FMCG and supplier companies.
· We hosted three well-attended membership events in Miami, Reims (France) and New York; as well as six supplier events in Miami, Gurgaon (India), Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos and Frankfurt, reaching more than 1000 participants from our supplier community.
· AIM-PROGRESS engaged with numerous external stakeholders, from Oxfam to SAI platform and Sustainable Food Lab. This is part of our programme to hold continuing dialogue with relevant or similar initiatives, to learn from each other and share, instead of reinventing the wheel; particular focus has been on strengthening the ties with the Global Social Compliance Program of the Consumer Goods Forum.
· Further internal benchmarking has been carried out through our annual membership survey, a new round of which is about to be launched for 2015.
· We have expanded our Mutual Recognition activities through an update of our common criteria, strengthening our work with ITC on comparing our audit protocols and providing a list of over 15,000 audited suppliers for mutual recognition of audits.
· A Human Rights self-assessment questionnaire was released for use by those member companies seeking to implement the UN ‘Ruggie’ principles in their businesses.
· Our strategy to ‘positively impact peoples’ lives in our common supply chains’ is being implemented through dedicated work to accelerate our own members’ capabilities, more effectively assuring compliance and driving processes of continuous improvement.
· On the team front, thanks to Chris Thurston for his contributions and welcome to Ieva Vilimaviciute supporting the AIM-PROGRESS Secretariat.
· Finally, we were saddened by the passing away of our human rights work stream leader, Clifford Henry of Procter & Gamble. He will be sorely missed.
Looking forward to 2015 and beyond, themes for us will include:
· Further external input from stakeholders and development of our strategic themes through member meetings in Reading (UK - March), Minneapolis, (USA - June) and France (Autumn), together with a packed calendar of supplier events.
· More work on integrating the UN guiding principles on business & human rights into responsible sourcing practices, ensuring our industry and suppliers act with integrity, benchmarking each other’s programs, reference tools/material for member capability improvement and more focus on the environmental pillar of responsible sourcing.
· Further galvanising our membership around driving continuous improvement with a new project on supply chain mapping, and measurement of impact of responsible sourcing programs
Thanks to member companies’ continuing involvement with AIM-PROGRESS, enjoy the festive break and look forward to meeting again in 2015!
David Lawrence
