OREANDA-NEWS. October 12, 2010. Kiev hosted a round table discussing introduction of a course on corporate social responsibility in Ukrainian universities. The meeting was attended by Heads of Ukrainian universities and representatives of the Ministry of Education.

The round table discussion "Introducing a Course on Corporate Responsibility in Ukrainian Universities: Methodology, First Results, Outlook" was held with the support of the Global Compact Network in Ukraine and SCM represented by the Director of International and Investor Relations and the Chair of the Global Compact Network in Ukraine Jock Mendoza-Wilson and CSR Manager Aleksandra Zayarnaya.

The event was organized by Kiev Shevchenko National University, the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the Ukrainian Association for Management Development and Business Education (UAMDBE) and the Scientific and Methodological Commission for Economy and Management of Classical Universities at the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

The round table discussed the need to introduce a CSR course in Ukrainian universities and presented a Bachelor programme "Corporate Social Responsibility" recommended by the Ministry of Education of Ukraine. SCM and the Global Compact Network in Ukraine made their contributions to development of the programme.

The programme will introduce future specialists to the general principles of interaction between business and society, CSR theory as well as case studies of social responsibility in Ukrainian and international companies.

As part of the discussion of the prospects of training CSR specialists, Aleksandra Zayarnaya presented a sample of CSR Manager's job description and spoke about the knowledge and skills required from such a specialist.

In addition, SCM and UAMDBE initiated the Ukrainian competition for the best customised bachelor programme on corporate social responsibility. The results of the competition will be announced in early 2011.

"CSR teaching needs to be high-quality and inspiring. In this case students will understand the importance of social responsibility for development of the society. This will make it possible to achieve necessary results in the near term: more and more Ukrainian companies will start implementing the principles and standards of social responsibility in everyday activities, which, in turn, will improve social and living standards of all Ukrainians. We organized this competition to make the CSR course as interesting and useful as possible," noted Jock Mendoza-Wilson.