MILAN, ITALY: JANUARY 28, 2015 – Registration has officially opened for the 2015 annual congress of CIBJO, the World Jewellery Confederation, which will take place in Salvador, Brazil, May 4-6, 2015, with pre-congress meetings on May 2 and May 3. Salvador is the capital of the north-eastern Brazilian state of Bahia.

Congress participants can register by way of the dedicated CIBJO Congress website, located at http://congress2015.cibjo.org/, which was launched yesterday. The website includes extensive background about the` congress, including the preliminary agenda, information about the host city and organisations, travel information, galleries, a section for the press and more.

In addition to congress registration forms, participants can book hotel room online and pre-register for a series of tours taking place in and around Salvador from May 2 through May 5, and for a post-congress mine tour in Bahia, which will take place May 7-10.

The congress is being hosted by Instituto Brasileiro de Gemas e Metais Preciosos (IBGM), working in close cooperation with the local jewellery association in Bahia, Progemas (Associação Bahiana dos Produtores e Comerciantes de Gemas e Metais Preciosos).

The main congress venue and hotel will be the Sheraton da Bahia Hotel, Salvador, located in a prime downtown location nearby the historic city centre of Pelourinho, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is renowned for its Portuguese colonial architecture, with historical monuments dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

Serving as the official venue for the meeting of the CIBJO Assembly of Delegates, the CIBJO Congress will gather the members of national jewellery and gemstone associations from more than 40 countries and representatives of many of the industry’s most important commercial bodies. The congress also serves as a forum for CIBJO’s professional commissions, and is the venue at which its Diamond, Coloured Stones, Pearl, Precious Metals, Gemmological and Coral Blue Books are discussed and updated.

 It is the first time that a CIBJO Congress is taking place in Latin America.

CIBJO, the World Jewellery Confederation, and Fiera di Vicenza, have announced that they will launch the jewellery industry’s first web-based Corporate Social Responsibility compliance system at the VICENZAORO January show in Vicenza Italy. The system was developed by Branded Trust Assurance Systems.

The launch will take place will take place at 2:00 PM on Sunday, January 25, in Pavilion 7.1, Room 7.1.2b, at Fiera di Vicenza, and will be followed by a seminar entitled  “Social Responsibility as the New Reality: Best Practice Initiatives, Tools and Business Success.”

The CIBJO-Fiera di Vicenza CSR system, powered by Branded Trust,  is geared to provided practical and economic solutions to all companies in the industry seeking to achieve and manage social compliance, develop risk management policies and do social reporting.

Managed online, the Branded Trust system provide simple, effective tools that are easily managed, integrate with existing systems and bring leading businesses into compliance with the major international rule structures. Its tools include a web-based management system that can be implemented across an organisation.  The system includes a set of policies, measures, full implementation support, education and reporting. Branded Trust provides a certification to businesses that have achieved successful implementation.

Its second tool is an ethical market system, which allows certified business to participate in the ethical market.  Participating in ethical markets not only provides supply-chain transparency and product differentiation but reduces business risks associated with markets.

Branded Trust, which was presented last year at the United Nations in New York,  is the outcome of an extended research partnership among a team of researchers, business leaders and industry associations, which led to the development of effective methods for improving business performance by combining outstanding management practice with social responsibility principles.

Photo Caption:  The jewellery industry’s first web-based Corporate Social Responsibility compliance system will to introduced at the VICENZAORO January show in Vicenza, Italy.

Whereas it once was regarded by many as an optional alternative in the jewellery and gemstone industry, systematic and verifiable ethical business standards is today considered a core requirement. The practical implementation of these standards will be the subject of a seminar and workshop that will take place at the VICENZAORO January show in Vicenza Italy. It will presented by two of the industry’s leading experts.

 Entitled “Social Responsibility as the New Reality: Best Practice Initiatives, Tools and Business Success,” the seminar is  organised by CIBJO, the World Jewellery Confederation, and Fiera di Vicenza, and will take place on Sunday, January 25, from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM in Pavilion 7.1, Room 7.1.2b, at Fiera di Vicenza. It is being held within the framework of CIBJO and Fiera di Vicenza’s association with the United Nation’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which is dedicated toward the development of educational programmes promoting Corporate Social Responsibility and sustainability in the international jewellery and gemstone sectors.

The seminar presenters are Greg Valerio, a British jeweller who pioneered ethical and fair trade business practices, and is the founder of CRED Jewellery, which became Europe’s first jewellery company to retail fair trade green gold and platinum jewellery collections, and a co-founder of Fair Jewellery Action, which aims to make ethically sourced jewellery the only moral choice for consumers and suppliers; and legal expert Dr. Donald Feaver, the Chief Technology Officer of Branded Trust Assurance Systems and  a Director of the Branded Trust Foundation. Branded Trust Assurance Systems, in association with CIBJO and the Gemmological Association of Great Britain, has developed a suite of online courses as well Social Responsibility Management tools including a comprehensive ethical market and transparent supply-chain and chain of custody solution.

Also participating will be Gaetano Cavalieri, President of CIBJO; James Riley, CEO of the Gemmological Association of Great Britain (Gem-A); and Vivien Johnston, Chair of the Jewellery Ethics Committee in the United Kingdom.

In the first part of seminar, Mr. Valerio will discusses the new ethical realities for jewellers and suppliers, some of the key responsible sourcing initiatives available to jewellers, such as Fairtrade Gold, conflict free sourcing, transparency and traceability disciplines, and also practical steps that businesses can take to become leading “best practice” companies.

In the second part, Dr. Feaver will explain how a new era of Social Responsibility (SR) is quickly emerging. He will identify the types of businesses that are seizing this opportunity, the new breed of business leaders that are making this happen and the new tools they are using to accelerate their businesses to SR “best practice.”

“Over the last 10 years, the mining and jewellery trades have come under increasing ethical scrutiny from campaign organisations, governments, and voluntary civil society movements,” explained Mr. Valerio. “Business as usual for jewellers is now a thing of the past.”

“Traditional paper-based ‘certification’ approaches are fast becoming tools of the old era,” said Dr. Feaver. “New approaches are more constructive, and a focus on business improvement through Social Responsibility has the potential to deliver a higher Return on Investment. The new approaches are more holistic with targeted tools for ‘people, companies and products.'”