REAP: the heart of UNIDO’s CSR Programme

The Responsible Entrepreneurs Achievement  Programme (REAP) is a CSR-based management and reporting tool. It was  developed by UNIDO to assist Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in  their efforts to implement CSR-based management approaches and operation  methods, thereby aligning economic, social and environmental aspects of business (also referred to as “Triple Bottom Line Approach”).

Based on the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, as well as  international standards in the social and environmental domains, such as  ISO 14001, SA 8000, or OHSAS 18001, it provides a structured framework  in combination with an analytical software, which can be used to gather,  process, evaluate and report data to track progress in implementing CSR  in SMEs.

Against the background of the philosophy ‘’Enhancing  Responsible Competitiveness through 1-to-1 Assistance’’ the Programme is  based on a UNIDO cooperation with qualified local CSR experts who are  trained and certified by the Organization.

Challenges

• Having emerged from the UNIDO Business Partnership Programme and the UNIDO Cleaner Production approach, REAP specifically aims at:
• Creating a worldwide system of trained and certified UNIDO CSR
• Experts for providing 1-to-1 support to SMEs
• Helping SMEs to practice responsible entrepreneurship, by translating CSR principles into a commercially viable management approach
• Combining best practices on environmental, social, and financial management, based on engineering principles
• Creating continuous improvement management processes as the basis for successful CSR implementation
• Focusing on implementing CSR principles and standards rather than on reporting