The Global Sourcing Council Announces 2015 3S Award Winners

NEW YORK - Sept. 17, 2015 - PRLog -- The Global Sourcing Council announced the 2015 GSC 3S Awards (Sustainable and Socially Responsible Sourcing awards), http://www.gsc3sawards.com, winners at the UN Headquarters in New York, NY. The award cermony took place on September 16th in the United Nations, where the UN Summit for adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is to take place on September 25th.

"The winners of GSC 3S Awards exemplify gold standards in responsible business practices, and constitute a working template for assisting others globally in creating a scalable sustainable business model," said Angeline Judex, Executive Director, GSC 3S Awards. “The stories told by GSC 3S Award applicants contribute the voices from from all corners of the world into historical discussions on the role of business sector in Sustainable Development Goals," said Wanda Lopuch, Chair of the Global Sourcing Council.

The GSC 3S Awards program honors best sustainable and socially responsible practices in global sourcing, as implemented by companies, NGOs and individuals in support of global sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, ethical and ecological sourcing practices and the empowerment of local communities that are part of the global supply chain. It is the only awards program geared specifically towards the global sourcing sector.

The 3S Awards program was conceived by the Global Sourcing Council, http://www.gscouncil.org, a non-profit organization that honors and celebrates 3S practices exercised by the global sourcing community.

The 2015 GSC 3S Awards Winners (http://gscouncil.org/meet-the-2015-gsc-3s-awards-winners/) are:

Community Engagement Award: Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL)

In SOIL’s simple social business design, wastes from SOIL’s ecological sanitation toilets are collected and transported to a waste treatment facility where the waste is safely composted into rich, agricultural-grade compost. This compost is then sold for agricultural application. Revenue from monthly toilet user fees, waste treatment fees, and compost sales are collected to support ongoing costs and to showcase the private sector potential to affordably and sustainably provide sanitation services in the world’s most impoverished and water-scarce urban communities.

Employee Engagement Award: Greyston Bakery

For 30+ years, Greyston has proudly offered Open Hiring, providing employment opportunities to individuals with barriers to employment. Anyone, regardless of their background can sign the Open Hiring waiting list. When a position opens, the next person on our list is given a job and training, no questions asked. This year marks our 25^th anniversary supplying delicious brownies to Ben & Jerry’s. We are proud to be disrupting business status quo by baking delicious brownies and cookies to provide jobs to marginalized individuals.

Empowered Woman Award: Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE)

18% of women and girls in Rwanda miss school and work because they can’t afford pads. SHE has found a solution to this problem. SHE makes pads locally and employs members of the community. Here is how we are doing it. SHE provides banana farmers equipment and training to process banana fiber. Farmers sell the banana fiber to SHE, Rwanda. We process the fiber at our community factory. At our factory the fiber gets cut, washed, dried, fluffed and assembled. The pads are sold at affordable prices to girls and women who need them.

Most Innovative Sourcing Award: Aduna, Ltd

Aduna is an Africa-inspired health brand and social business. Our mission is to create demand for under-utilised natural products from small producers in Africa – starting with baobab, the wild-harvested nutrient-dense superfruit 10m households can provide. Since launching in 2012, we have invested heavily in marketing to drive awareness of baobab amongst consumers & trade, taking it from complete obscurity to an internationally best-selling superfood distributed in 15 markets. We are now plugging the demand directly to communities in Ghana via our smallholder supply-chain. This video demonstrates the impact of our project on just one of the 2,014 women already benefiting.

Impact Sourcing Award: AMBA

AMBA, an Ashoka Fellow driven Social Enterprise economically empowers adults with Moderate to Severe Intellectual disability using Information Technology, Peer Training and Peer Supervision. An ecosystem of learning and earning appropriate with their acumen, making them contributors to family and Society. While they cannot recognise sounds of alphabets they still do accurate two window visual data entry in English. Visual matching helps select options and achieve in multiple languages as do 150 youngsters capture inflow of milk from farmers/self-help group women to Dinshaw Ice Cream Collection Centers in Nagpur, but they cannot do data entry using the keyboard in the vernacular.

People's Choice Award: Didi’s ( A unit of Sisters in Solidarity)

DiDi’s, a Lucknow based social enterprise that was founded in 2008 motivated by the goal of empowering very poor women, by skilling them and providing livelihoods. It started with 4 women and an annual turnover of $20,000 and now employs 65 women and has an annual turnover of $300,000. DiDi’s is run ‘by women’ and ‘for women. Through its 3 arms – DiDi’s Foods, Creations and Driving, we educate, equip and empower women to enable them to fight poverty, discriminatory violence and low self-esteem. Our profits are deployed towards the education of their daughters and other girls like them.

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The Global Sourcing Council is a non-profit organization with an educational mission to promote an exchange of ideas and information among businesses, trade organizations, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and academia; to discuss and define sustainable and responsible practices in global sourcing and supply chain management; and to encourage progressive economic growth leading to increased trade, investment and social good, all with an aim to increase knowledge, deepen trade relations and broaden commercial and cultural ties among nations. - http://www. (http://www.gscouncil.org/)gscouncil. (http://www.gscouncil.org/)org