ESG Agenda in HSE SPB Projects: A Conference on Sustainable Development on Campus
The participants discussed implementing the ESG agenda within the learning process of the university, project learning possibilities, intellectual volunteering, and communication strategies. Moscow and Saint Petersburg campuses, in collaboration with the Agency for Social Investment and Innovation, presented the “Tell the World” project.
The conference, organized by the Laboratory for Reputation Management in Education, debuted as a platform for sharing experience and ideas about implementing the ESG agenda into the learning process. Among the participants were representatives of the Moscow and Saint Petersburg campuses and of NPOs and social enterprises interested in working together and developing partnerships.
ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) means sustainable development based on environmental and social responsibility and a high quality of corporate governance. According to Magdalena Gaete, head of the Laboratory for Reputation Management in Education, the ESG agenda fully corresponds to the implementation of the “third mission”, and the campus in Saint Petersburg works on a series of projects in sustainable development. Following the “Environment” direction, the campus hosts lectures on separate waste management and sustainable fashion, also supporting separate waste collection. The Laboratory for Environmental and Technological History researches the history of human-nature relationships through technology. “Social” supports partnerships with different industries, developing competence, regular “career weeks” and “Higher School of career”, Saint Petersburg Conference on Inequality and Diversity (IDC), HSE Fest, etc. “Governance” is honed on the discussion platforms of different conferences, first at the “Education and Cities of the World." According to Magdalena, all these directions help sustainable development through service-learning when students participate in projects with social importance, combining studying with socially important tasks. This allows implementing a new innovative teaching practice to help students receive not only knowledge but also experience in analyzing context and developing skills in modeling complex situations.
In 2021, HSE, in collaboration with the Agency for Social Investment and Innovation and with the support of the Presidential Grants Foundation, launched the “Tell the World” project for NPOs and social enterprises. The contest’s goal is to help resurface the most interesting tasks from the third sector’s representatives. Students from both the Moscow and Saint Petersburg HSE campuses worked on solving these tasks through applied project-based learning.
Magdalena Gaete, head of the Laboratory for Reputation Management in Education at HSE Saint Petersburg
Thanks to social-oriented projects, students now see the bright and vivid world outside of campus walls, and the university takes part in the life of the city or even the whole region. We are currently working on the “Sustainable Development of Universities in Russia” with our students. Analyzing different cases, we see that sustainable development as a concept still isn’t implemented widely enough. We plan on developing (with the help of our partners) and fulfilling (through our students) about 70 projects for NPOs and social enterprises, and at least 20 projects for solving different social problems here on campus.
CEO of the Agency for Social Investment and Innovation, Oksana Anistratenko, notes that all the successful results of the pilot part of the “Tell the World” project are ready for replication at at least five Russian universities. She announced the beginning of stage 2 of the contest in July 2022, hoping there will be more companies joining those thirty that participated before.
Oksana Anistratenko, CEO of the Agency for Social Investment and Innovation
As the pandemic showed us, the non-commercial sector is vulnerable not only financially but also in terms of stability and organizing strategic growth. This is why what we learned during the project is vital. It was not just for show or credits; it really works. We are happy to see new companies and associations joining our projects. They receive employees who understand the importance of teamwork and investing in the community—our students. Another important note is that, according to our latest polls among young people, one of the most important criteria in choosing an employer is how loyal a company or corporation is to the concept of social responsibility.
Liya Sidlina, leading expert in Centre for Social Innovation Ecosystems, Institute of Social and Economic Development at HSE
“Tell the World” contest and all student projects completed during its course help universities see their place in the series of steps within the concept of sustainable development. NPOs implemented tasks, and students completed them using soft skills received during training. Among the 30 applications, we managed to complete more than half of them (16 are fully done; some projects are still in progress). It is a pretty good success rate that shows that both organizations and students are ready to take the job seriously.
The contest also gave us a chance to see any weak spots in the way universities (represented by students) and NPOs work together. Among these were the issues of communication, negotiation experience, and teamwork, which are now the focus for improvement. It’s clear now that we need simple, entertaining, and easily implemented road maps for interaction for maximum effectiveness. And all partnerships should be built on mutual respect.
Representatives of the “Aprel” charity fund and the “Yom-yom” inclusive centre shared their experiences. Valentina Lemeshko, a student of the “Political Science and World Politics” program, tells about her work on informational promotion of the Intercession of the Theotokos parish, which holds six churches and an almshouse. Maxim Kim, a student of the “Economics” program, speaks of supporting the “Open University” project, which focuses on helping children in difficult situations.
Margarita Dubrovina, fundraiser and PR manager for the “Yom-yom” inclusive centre
Our project had a research task: to study successful fundraising cases. I think it was pretty successful. Students could complete tasks that were sometimes postponed due to limited resources or because the employees were too overworked. Competent students managed to focus deeply on certain tasks, analyze the material, and gather contacts for many organizations that could later become our benefactors. All this huge work was done effectively and accurately. This is especially heartwarming, since many NPOs spend too much time and effort participating in contests for scholarships, and you never know what the outcome will be. This time, everything went well.
Svetlana Boguslavskaya presented several ongoing projects on service-learning: the eco-charity project “Kryshechki dobroty” (with the “Tochka opory” charity fund) and several projects in collaboration with “AdVita”, "Aprel,” and “Na kolyaske bez barierov” funds.
The social agenda in the communication strategy of companies became another topic of discussion. Participants focused on competencies needed to promote content that can popularize sustainable development and on training specialists capable of working with the ESG agenda as social content, not PR material.
Marina Bogomyagkova, chief producer at ESG Media Reputation Management Agency and chief editor of ЦУР.ONLINE video magazine about holistic sustainable development
As long as the sustainable development agenda is considered something elitist and discussed only in corridors, it will never leave the borders of a single mindset and become attractive to society. Companies that can do good things and speak of them with eloquence can be really attractive to the younger generation of potential employees, as well as to those who are ready to “vote with their feet” for a socially responsible business. We must integrate this skill into our educational programs to force the media field to work for us. We need to popularize the sustainable development agenda; it needs competence and professionals; it needs to become a vital part of our society.