Our Goals

According to UNESCO, for every additional year of schooling, a person’s job prospects and income raise by 10-20%. Yet around 617 million children and adolescents are not proficient in either reading or mathematics. This is a huge barrier to overcome poverty where Central and Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa face the biggest challenges. (about 80% of adolescents in school between the ages of 12 and 14 are unable to read at minimum proficiency levels.)

People need literacy, vocational and further education opportunities through training, schooling and on-the-job experience.

Realizing the importance of education for economic development and poverty alleviation globally, our goal is to promote literacy and skill-based education at all levels by achieving the following objectives:

• Equip our youth with the necessary school education coupled with practical skills, technical and vocational training that unleashes and sharpen their innovative and creative thinking enabling them to compete in the fast-paced global economies.
• Carving means and ways to bridge the competency and education gap in our youth in commonwealth member countries enhancing their employability and providing them with an opportunity to explore their acumen in the developed nations.

Each year billions of dollars are deployed in such ventures, often backed by the likes of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), the World Bank Group (WBG) and more.

Public-private partnerships between government organisations and private-sector companies provide opportunities to finance and deliver large-scale infrastructure projects at speed.

The roadmap to successful economies evolved around the concept of public-private partnerships. Accordingly, our goal is to develop a liaison with governmental bodies and the private sector by achieving the following objectives:

• Create financing opportunities through shared funding for entrepreneurial ventures
• Execution of large scale infrastructure projects at speed
• Promotion of bilateral relations between the government and private sector in member countries by engaging in dialogues, conferences, and sharing best practices.
• Organizing trade exhibitions and conferences to promote cross-border trade and commodity exchange among member countries.

Most of the 3.3 billion people employed globally in 2018 experienced a lack of material well-being, economic security, equal opportunities or scope for human development, research from the International Labour Organization found. Having a job does not always equate to a decent living, experiencing enjoyment or social protection. More than one-quarter of workers in low- and middle-income countries were living in extreme or moderate poverty. In low-income countries, however, the pace of poverty reduction is not expected to keep up with employment growth, so that the actual number of working poor in these countries is projected to rise.

Employment generation needs to go hand in hand with the protection of worker rights and mental wellness.

Since employment generation is the hallmark of healthy nations, therefore, our goal is to maximize the employment opportunities across member countries by achieving the following objectives;

• Facilitating skill-based job opportunities through capacity building
• Creation of talent hub for potential employers in the member countries
• Developing a strategic network of business associations and enterprises among members countries for employment exchange initiatives.

Fast internet access is crucial to today’s entrepreneur and global trading MSME. In 2019, the Commonwealth put the Digital Connectivity Agenda as one of its five major initiatives for increasing trade and development.

From satellite telecom partnerships to e-commerce trading platforms, video-conferences and payments systems – digital connectivity is a major driver of growth for local companies to become global traders.

In the era of digital economies, tech enablement is the key to sustainability and growth of existing and emerging business enterprises. Our goal is to strengthen the digital enablement of business enterprises by achieving the following objectives;

• Encouraging cross border trade through digital market places/platforms allowing businesses to showcase their product and services to a wider range of global segments.
• Empowering business enterprises through digital marketing solutions and enable them to reach global customers.
• Supporting offline trade to transform and add value through online operational presence.

According to the Global Infrastructure Outlook, there is a $15tn gap between predicted and required infrastructure investment for 2039. Infrastructure has a huge multiplier impact on economies due to the number of business opportunities and jobs it creates. Government is often the blocker to infrastructure projects moving ahead, yet it remains key to advancing self-sustaining business environments.

In the emerging and developed economies, infrastructural development is the key to sustainability and growth. Our goal is to provide expertise and insight to the member countries towards smart infrastructural development by taking the following initiations;

• Advocacy drive for the fulfilment of infrastructural needs in members countries
• Establishment of the private management committee to undertake the development initiatives by creating an investment pool within and across respective members countries.

Around 1.6bn people live in inadequate housing, UN research states. Around 1bn of those living in slums and informal settlements. Having no light at night time, scarce cooking resources while living in cramped potentially unhygienic conditions make it harder to move out of poverty.

There is a global shortage of decent homes yet formidable materials technology and engineering exits (and has done for some years) to provide high-quality building structures with sanitation and infrastructure at low cost. It is merely a matter of deploying not only housing but connecting those dwellings to economic and social opportunity.
People require a good standard of housing at a price that gives them a chance to move upward. In this respect,

Our goal is to meet the burning need of low-cost housing for the underprivileged communities by achieving the following objectives;

• Developing a pool of fund for providing low-cost housing in developing countries
• Establishing a framework which can be replicated for other areas of development.

According to McKinsey, the key to successful CSR programmes that bring benefits to all stakeholders is a partnership. If run well, CSR can benefit people (recipients of schemes), profit and planet etc. Executed badly, they can be seen as mere philanthropy, pet projects or at worst – propaganda.

Our goal is to liaise with established and reputed business enterprises for assuming and fulfilling their social obligations and become a socially responsible corporate citizen. We intend to promote and support corporate social responsibility by achieving the following objectives:

• Facilitating the corporate sector to embed CSR in their core business functions so that the business is conscious of its efforts and operations by evaluating the impact it makes into the society and world at large
• Developing strong ties with leading CSR associations worldwide such as the UN Global Compact for sharing best practices and promoting ways of embedding CSR within an organization
• To raise awareness on the importance of CSR for organizational sustainability by engaging the corporate sector in social dialogues, conferences, business talk series etc.
• To facilitate the corporate sector in conducting social audits and sustainability studies ensuring social compliances within their supply chain.

UNESCO highlights Youth Development as the key driver for eradicating poverty. Learning teamwork and leadership can help young men and women to drive social innovation and change.

It is a proven fact that socio-economic development of any country is reliant on empowerment and advancement of its youth and women. Therefore, our goal is to transform our youth and women into productive workforce thereby channelizing their contribution for economic progression of member countries. We have devised the following objectives for the accomplishment of our goal:

• Establishment of Business Facilitation Centre enabling the youth to innovate and incubate their business ideas, developing business plans. attracting investments and establishing their start-ups line with legal and market requirements.
• Liaison with the universities and academia in member countries to bridge the academic curriculum with expectations of the corporate world so as to equip the youth with business needs in the modern digital economies
• Encouraging industrial homes and cottage industries establishment for capacity building and employability of females living in underprivileged and rural areas providing them an opportunity to adopt skills based training and join the economic activity of member countries
• Advocating equal pay and equal right to work for women at all levels creating attractive employment opportunities for females in the mainstream business at managerial and leadership roles
• Establishment of a pool of resources to encourage women and youth to setup small and medium enterprises for realising their entrepreneurial potential.

A quarter of a century ago, it was unusual to become a social entrepreneur. Today it is the best thing that a business can accomplish – contributing to creating a thriving and progressive society.

The UN factors social entrepreneurs as important stakeholders in driving its own Sustainable Development Goals. The impact investing industry grew to more than $500bn in 2019.

The CE Club seeks to encourage social entrepreneurship in its member countries by meeting the following objectives:

• To connect companies and governments with the socially deprived class for establishing social entrepreneurial ventures that help society in improving its social norms and living standards
• Formulation of a panel of consultants and experts from the member countries to propose social entrepreneurial ventures to the corporate sector along with its feasibility and viability in line with the social requirements.