SOCIETY

The United Nations recently set 2030, as the time horizon for reaching the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 sub-goals. Unlike the previous Millennium Development Goals, which a time horizon the past fifteen years, the Sustainable Development Goals are global, given that all countries, developed and developing ones, are required to implement them.

The fourth sustainable development goal of the UN is for quality education. Among other goals, this fourth objective aims by 2030, to:

• ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant learning outcomes
• ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education
• eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations
• ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy
• build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all

Nevertheless, quality education and sustainability do not constitute a new field for KPMG given that both for both at the level of vision and history and at the level of action, sustainable development and corporate social responsibility practices have been a part of the firm long before the official adoption of these definitions.

And this has been the case because what lies at the heart of our business is the value of constant development and improvement of the quality of our services, which reaches our partners either directly, through the development of educational programs that we create, or indirectly, through the lifelong training that we provide to our people.

KPMG International has established the KPMG Family for Literacy (KFFL) centre, created to fight illiteracy and promote the love of reading and the donation of books to children from low economic strata in the US. This specific action builds on the energy of the wider family of KPMG, where all, including the spouses, children, interns and retired members, can take part.

Since its establishment in 2008, the KFFL centre has distributed more than 2.5 million new books to low-income children in more than 100 communities in the United States.

Therefore, on the occasion of the International Literacy Day and in the context of the Corporate Social Responsibility activities, we organized the ‘50 books - 50 smiles’ action to support objective 4 of the UN on ‘safeguarding free, equal and quality education by promoting opportunities for lifelong learning’.