The International Journal
of Not-for-Profit Law

Volume 4, Issue 1, September 2001

On June 5-8, 2001, an international conference on corporate social responsibility took place in São Paulo Brazil, under the sponsorship of the Ethos Institute.  The Institute, which was formed in 1998 under the leadership of Oded Grajew, has 422 members, including such large international corporations as Volkswagen and Philips, sponsored two previous conferences on the same topic in 1999 and 2000.  This year’s conference included a speech by Simon Zadek of the British Institute on Social and Ethical Accountability (www.accountability.org.uk), who discussed ways of measuring effectiveness of social responsibility projects.  One of the working groups reported on the issue of workplace volunteerism and reported that 5.7 percent of Nestle Brazil’s workers participate in a program to promote healthy lifestyles.  In addition, IBM has developed a “virtual volunteer” project with the University of São Paulo.  For further information on this year’s conference, please go to the Ethos website at www.ethos.org.br.

* We are grateful to Christiane Biedermann, a member of the H-Dritter Sektor network in which ICNL participates, and who provided some of the information in this report.  Ms. Biedermann is working on an multi-national effort to build volunteer programs and she is based in Brazil.