Businesses and their communities

Community development is a strategy used in organising action plans to address shared needs and problems to protect the vulnerable and make communities more livable. In building an inclusive society to help improve the wellbeing of communities and households, companies can adopt community development projects.

For most businesses, community development is often viewed independently from their day-to-day operations. More focus is placed on relationships with suppliers and customers rather than the communities the companies operate in. However, companies and communities are interdependent players in development or even profit-making as both factors have shared successes and expectations. Communities need businesses to pay taxes for governments to have money to provide public services like electricity, education, etc. In the same vein, businesses need a pool of educated students to hire as workers and access their target market within communities. 

Such interdependency is good for advancing the achievement of the sustainable development goals. All the SDGs can be adopted in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities to support local communities where the business resides or operates. More and more organisations keep integrating sustainable development practices into the core operations and products and services they offer- hence creating shared value. Bewsys is a good example. 

Key areas like promoting healthcare, ensuring environmental sustainability, eradicating hunger and poverty, rural development, and building a more inclusive society, need support from businesses. This support from businesses will contribute social capital and ensure the participation of communities in creating sustainable value.