Rold & Rold Academy: a journey towards a sustainable approach for the UN SDG’s

Rold & Rold Academy: a journey towards a sustainable approach in every single aspect of our life

Rold Academy, the new-born business unit in Rold, is organising its first initiative, which will address all people actually working in Rold. The aim of this initiative is to support and guide all Rold staff members on a journey toward sustainability. This path will be structured into well-defined phases, which will last for the entire coming year. The initiative will enable a deep dive into the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and the Agenda 2030. By increasing the individual knowledge in these topics, it will be possible for each person of the Rold community to increase their awareness of how important is to act both at the individual and at the “corporate” level. The latter will be the last phase of our journey and will result in a definition of a more SDG-oriented strategy for sustainable innovation in Rold.

Rold Academy has been created in order to foster a life-long learning approach, to promote continuous sharing of ideas and views between people with different expertise, roles, and backgrounds. On the other hand, Rold Academy aims at strengthening Rold values, reinforcing, and widening them.

Having clear in mind this rationale, we have designed the first initiative of the Rold Academy, which will start on the 1st of December 2020. The initiative will aim to share, reinforce, and implement our sustainable mindset at all company levels and enable each one of us to contribute in a more conscious and influential manner to the achievement of the Agenda 203o.

The Agenda 2030 has been adopted by the 193 members of the UN in September 2015. It represents one of the challenging ambitions of the world. It is made up of 17 goals and 169 targets, whose aim is to monitor the progress towards the achievement of these goals. These goals design the priorities to be tackled in order to make our world a better place for us and the next generations. And, in order to make the world we want, it is necessary to erase poverty, to fight inequalities, and to protect our planet.

So, Agenda 2030 is a clear path to make sustainable development real.

Since 1987, the president of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (in «Our common future^[1]»).

For many years, the general approach was to associate the concept of “sustainability” with the green approach. However, thanks to the Agenda 2030, there has been a complete shift in this paradigm: to achieve real sustainable development it is necessary to consider three dimensions: the economic sphere, the societal one, and the biosphere. These three dimensions are strictly interconnected: the positive impact on one of these dimensions has positive consequences also on the other two; while the negative impact on one of them will negatively affect also the others.

For this reason, the Agenda 2030 calls for a global engagement, where governments and institutions, businesses, and people work together to achieve these ambitious goals. In particular, businesses have a key role in the achievement of the SDGs through investments in Research and Innovation, by leveraging on their creativity and their innovative approach, and by disseminating and promoting initiatives related to the SDGs within their organizations and also in the places where they operate.

And Rold has decided to strengthen its commitment in contributing to the achievement of the Agenda 2030 with a larger investment in terms of people involved, R&S activities as well as dissemination activities.

If you already know Rold, you can surely agree that many of the activities promoted by Rold (as well as its principles and values) are in line with the SDGs. Notwithstanding, it often happens that this strong connection is not really explicit. Thanks to this initiative, it will be possible to disseminate what we already have done or we are doing, while strengthening the commitment of Rold, including each of us, to the SDGs, and thus to building a better world for future generations.

The activities, as already introduced, will be divided into three main phases:

• To increase the knowledge and widespread awareness of the 17 SDGs and related targets and identify possible initiatives to contribute to their achievements
• Foster individual engagement by increasing the awareness that each contribution can make the difference
• Steer the definition of systematic and holistic solutions to amplify our positive impact for achieving the SDGs and mitigate possible negative impacts.

We have identified 17 Ambassadors that will represent one SDG. They come from different units and departments and have different roles, expertise, and background in Rold. They have been selected according to different features. Some of them already cooperate within Rold in some activities in line with SDGs; some others have the potential to influence and steer the change thanks to their role, attitudes, and personality.

In the upcoming days, the Ambassadors will receive the first cycle of focused training on their SDG that will enable them to master all the components of a goal they are assigned for.

Subsequently, they will lead small focused groups in workshops aiming at identifying possible links between Rold activities, SDGs, priorities, and possible strategies for sustainable development. Indeed, every one of us, while committing to the 2030 Agenda, need to localise the goals, targets and efforts to make them relevant and engaging for its own context and ecosystem.

The final result will be the co-creation of the Manifesto of Rold for the SDGs, so as to contribute in a more concrete, real, structured and shared manner to the achievement of the SDGs.

^[1] https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5987our-common-future.pdf