Levi Strauss at UN Civil Society Hearings
LS&Co. remarks at the UN Civil Society Hearings in advance of the High Level meetings were made on April 8th, 2011. Joanne Lim-Pousard highlights the company’s leadership in HIV/AIDS and the need for the next jeanration of business leaders to stay focused on this effort.
Transcript
and our last speaker from the floor is
ms Joanne Lim-Pousard from the United
States where she is a senior manager of
the employee HIV/aids program at the
Levi Strauss & company thank you thank
you it is a privilege to be here to
represent Levi Strauss and our employees
there’s been some discussion of late of
private and public partnerships really
briefly in this room and I just wanted
to elaborate a little bit more about
that since our response began in
nineteen eighty-two we have always felt
that a critical role of business sector
is to join in the fight against this
pandemic the commercial sector is after
all an employer it is an influencer of
culture it is a donor partner and it’ll
help it is also a policy advocate as an
employer we are in a unique position not
only to provide life-saving hiv/aids
information to our employees but access
as well we found in our experience of
developing and delivering eight hiv/aids
workplace and treatment programs that
ensure of employees and families are
treated with dignity depends on many
factors and many partners we’ve worked
with NGOs at the local level to ensure
that relevant and culturally appropriate
education is provided to our employees
at that level we also work in
partnership with labor to meet the needs
and to ensure that the voice of our
workers are Matt and I wanted to second
Jan’s recommendation about the ILO
recommendation of HIV in the workplace
as that is an actionable item and
encouraged that it be added to the
declaration we also depend on a
supportive legal framework that allows
our employees freedom of travel and to
move across borders freely to do the
basics of their jobs as well as looking
to governments to provide an ensure
confidentiality and equal opportunity
employment in the workplace while we
have our internal policies we are
dependent on the laws of the countries
to uphold them as well our response to
HIV began almost 30 years ago and we
have since learned that a sustained and
authentic
business response goes well beyond
initial commitment and I just wanted to
close with just a couple of learnings
we’ve had I’ve heard the emphasis on
grooming young people and young leaders
but I also wanted to emphasize that we
not only need to groom young leaders in
the NGO sector and the government sector
but also young business leaders as they
will be the voice that will carry this
movement into the future they will also
be the decision makers of major
corporations and will be the decision
makers around CSR initiatives and
bringing that into the future and we’ve
also heard from Chris earlier this
morning about the need to look at new
channels and we echo that sentiment and
looking into new ways that we can reach
our consumer base and not just our
employees and finally just to wrap up
really quickly we need to take a value
chain perspective and looking at not
just our direct impact on the people we
work with and in my case it is our own
employees but to look at our suppliers
and to share best practices across them
as well thank you thank you very
