One Young World Impact Report Features LEAP for Social Impact on Gender Equality and Economic Growth.

LEAP was selected as one of 50 projects to be featured in the One Young World Impact Report 2019 for showing significant “Social Return on Investment” and effectively addressing one of 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

oyw

New York, NY – LEAP (Leadership & Executive Acceleration Program), a leadership and social innovation program for Irish and Irish American women, has been featured in the One Young World Impact Report 2019  for its multifaceted approach to tackling the leadership gap in the workplace, and for its impact on gender equality.

The Report recognizes LEAP’s work to enhance the leadership capacity of the participants while developing a community of women supporting women. In particular, the program’s focus on developing leaders who are committed to giving back to the nonprofit community is highlighted.

One Young World (OYW) is the largest youth leadership summit in the world. The global community is comprised of 12,000 Ambassadors who work on projects that develop solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. Courtney Sunna, LEAP Co-Director in 2019 and a OYW Ambassador, introduced the LEAP program to the global organization.

LEAP was evaluated and selected as one of 50 programs (out of over 350 applications) to be included in the Impact Report for showing significant Social Return on Investment (SROI) and addressing one or more of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SROI methodology was inspired by Social Value UK and devised in discussions with PwC, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The average SROI for a project is 1:15 meaning that an investment of $1 delivers $15 in terms of positive social value. After an intensive analysis, LEAP’s SROI score was determined to be 1:22 and the data showed significant impact on SDG 5, Gender Equality and secondly SDG 8, Economic Growth. The program was one of five initiatives worldwide in the gender equality category.

“Women are still facing challenges all across the world as they strive for equality – and the workplace is no exception,” said LEAP Advisor, Courtney Sunna. “LEAP is focused on positioning women for leadership roles in their careers while also fostering a passion of giving back to local nonprofits. I am proud to be a One Young World Ambassador and part of a global community of change-makers working to achieve the SDG’s.”

“We are honored to be acknowledged for the positive impact LEAP is making towards gender equality in the workplace,” says Maura Kelly, LEAP Director. “This reaffirms our purpose – to help the next generation of women leaders tackle the barriers they face in business, and change the status quo. To succeed we need to be inclusive and we’re motivated to engage more men in the discussion.”

About LEAP: The Leadership Executive Acceleration Program is a hybrid leadership and social innovation program for Irish and Irish American women developed by the Irish International Business Network (IIBN) Board of Directors. The program is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Ireland through the Irish Consulate in New York and the IIBN New York. Additional support is provided by Grant Thornton and the Bank of Ireland’s Innovation Lab. The LEAP Program is able to deliver substantial impact to participants are no charge. Maura Kelly and Jennifer Scanlon are the Directors of the  LEAP 2020 program. Due to COVID19, the program went virtual two months into the schedule with minimal interruption.

https://www.leap-program.nyc/

About One Young World: OYW is a UK based not for profit organization that gathers young leaders from around the world to develop solutions to the globes most pressing issues. OYW holds annual Summits in different cities where delegates from over 190 countries are joined by world leaders who act as counselors. 20.9 million people have been positively impacted by initiatives led by OYW Ambassadors since 2010. The One Young World Summit 2020 is scheduled to take place in Munich, Germany in October.

One Young World Impact Report 2019

###

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.