Why is this important?

A company can work to advance children’s rights in partnership/collaboration with organisations such as NGOs or choose to donate money or volunteer time. This indicates the commitment of the company to advancing children’s rights in the workplace, marketplace or wider community.

About the scoring

A score of 10 is given if the company has either a partnership with an organisation that works on children’s rights issues or gives financial contributions and/or volunteering of employee time to such an organisation (e.g. UNICEF, Save the Children, PLAN, ECPAT, etc.).

A charitable donation can take the form of:

• Making monetary donations
• Inviting children for celebrations of important holidays (e.g. Christmas, Ramadan, Labour Day etc.)
• Providing school materials
• Staff volunteering for charity/NGOs/others without a set corporate level programme

N.B. activities that only occur once, and is not part of a longer initiative are not considered, unless it is clear from the reporting that the company is acting in response to a one-off event such as a crisis, natural disasters, disease outbreaks, wars etc.

A partnership can be, e.g.:

• A joint programme with another organisation to benefit children
• A partnership to ensure expert input or advice regarding impact on children in relation to company operations, programmes etc
• Staff volunteering as part of a corporate programme to benefit children

In cases where the company donates money to an organisation and terms it a “partnership”, for purposes of scoring it is not considered to be a collaboration/partnership and should instead be indicated as being a charity donation.

Initiatives whereby a company lets customers donate money to a charity without contributing its own funds/resources (e.g. matching contributions or similar) are not considered as the input from the company is minimal.

N.B. activities that only occur once, and is not part of a longer initiative are not considered.

Indicator reference

Children’s Rights and Business Principles:

• All business should meet their responsibility to respect children’s rights and commit to supporting the human rights of children (Principle 1)
• All business should respect and support children’s rights in relation to the environment and to land acquisition and use (Principle 7)
• All business should reinforce community and government efforts to protect and fulfil children’s rights (Principle 10)
• All business should help protect children affected by emergencies (Principle 9)