A live Jewellery Industry Voices seminar in Vicenza, Italy, in September 2021, organised jointly by the World Jewellery Confederation and the Italian Exhibition Group, which was being simultaneously streamed live to an audience around the world.
EDUCATION
As part of its commitment to nurture a socially responsible jewellery, gemstone and precious metals industry, CIBJO has developed an array of educational tools, materials and programmes, all of which designed to enable members of the business operate as informed, empathetic, responsible and proactive corporate citizens.
In October 2007, the World Jewellery Confederation organised a day-long conference at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva. Conducted in part by senior representatives of the UN Development Programme, it aimed to investigate how the Confederation may build for the jewellery sector a model that will enable the jewellery industry to contribute to the UN’s development goals, through responsible business.
In November 2007, it was announced that the Confederation had reached an understanding with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to develop a project that will assist in the creation of viable and sustainable jewellery industries in developing countries. It would involve the establishment of a body called the World Jewellery Confederation Education Foundation (WJCEF).
In January 2008, upon the advice of the United Nations, the Confederation retained a team of CSR experts to conduct a feasibility study for the design and development of training modules. These would be offered to members of the jewellery sector.
WJCEF’s first Executive Course in Corporate Social Responsibility was conducted in Belgium in June 2010. In the years that followed it has been involved in the organisation of seminars and workshop around the world, at industry conferences, congresses and trade shows, and even at the United Nations headquarters in New York in April 2014.
In 2010 WJCEF helped organise a workshop on CSR, which served as the keynote event of UNITAR Week in the United Nations Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo. The event was attended by high-ranking UN officials, members of the Chinese government, jewellery industry leaders from around the world and other business leaders.
Under the Confederation’s banner, WJCEF was instrumental the creation in 2011 of the United Nations International Training Centre for Corporate Opportunities (ITCCO), which is headquartered in Antwerp. The ITTCO programme covers human rights, labour and environmental issues, business codes of ethics, corporate social investment, corporate sustainability and governance issues that are most relevant to the complete pipeline of the jewellery industry.
In developing its educational programme, the Confederation has partnered extensively with the Italian Exhibition Group, which in 2013 was accredited by ECOSOC as a provider of the such services to the industry, through the World Jewellery Confederation. As such, the two organisations have organised multiple seminars each year, as part of a programme to instill responsible business, social and environmental practices in the jewellery industry. Since September 2020, these have been streamed live via the Internet to participants all over the world.
In April 2020, the Confederation launched the “Jewellery Industry Voices” webinar series was created to look at the impact and implications of the COVID-19 crisis on the jewellery business from the perspective of industry figures. Each webinar took the form of a panel discussion, featuring three to five panellists, addressing a different.
Initially intended to be short-running programme, the webinar series was a runaway success, attracting thousands of participants from around the world who viewed the sessions live, or afterwards on the Confederation’s YouTube channels. It was thus decided to broaden the range of topics to include subjects not directly to the COVID-19 situation, transforming the ‘Jewellery Industry Voices’ into an all-industry forum where all topic of importance may be presented and discussed.
The first season of Jewellery Industry Voices ran from April through July 2020, and it was followed by a second season, which began in September 2020 and concluded in July 2021. The third season began in September 2021, and a fourth in September 2022.
In September 2020, the World Jewellery Confederation, and Intertek Italia SpA, the Italian subsidiary of the Intertek Group, a multinational assurance, inspection, product-testing and certification company, announced a joint initiative to educate, train and certify CSR, sustainability and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) compliance officers, specifically for the gemstone and jewellery industries. It would be the first dedicated programme of its sort worldwide.”