Our social responsibility

Our people

As we continue to grow, attracting the best talent, empowering people to innovate and reinforcing our culture remain key to driving performance and maintaining a highly motivated workforce.

Our People and Culture team use three key pillars to drive our success:

These key pillars allow us to drive operational excellence within all our people interactions, keep us true to our seven core values and help us focus on what truly matters to us: our people.

Our seven core values

Social issues

Our goals and policies

Aligning our practices to support local communities and prioritising a positive social impact is not only a moral imperative but also a strategic one. We are committed to supporting >3,000 NPOs on their journey to leverage technology to increase positive impact. Additionally, we promote a giving back culture through our corporate social responsibility programme, where our employees and the business give back to the causes and communities close to us.

We understand that our commitment to our corporate social responsibility and dedication to creating an inclusive culture enhances not only our employee experience, by creating a sense of purpose and pride for the work we do, but also aims to catalyse thriving communities, ensuring our social commitment positively impacts the regions in which we operate.

SoftwareOne Gives Back

In 2023 we partnered with Benevity to launch our own volunteering and donations platform which is available to all SoftwareOne employees. This platform has over two million NPOs and allows our employees to get involved in giving and volunteering opportunities to give back to our communities.

As part of the launch campaign, SoftwareOne gave every employee a kick-off fund of CHF 20 for them to make their first donations. During this period, we managed to:

Our employees are passionate about the causes they support; below are some comments from some of the participants.

SoftwareOne Gives Back reinforces our commitment to society and our workforce. Since the launch of this programme in October 2023, we have focused on donations, and 2024 holds many possibilities to create missions and events on the platform. We will measure the effectiveness of this programme through employee participation in the multiple events and campaigns organised throughout the year. Additionally, our corporate donations aligned with our DEIB strategy will be facilitated through the platform.

Supporting direct positive digital transformation of NPOs and local communities

SoftwareOne Impact partners with non-profit organisations (NPOs) and non-profit technology providers around the world to have a positive impact on society and our planet. We believe that we all benefit when NPOs, that are driving positive change, are successful. Technology is the key to helping them scale and achieve more. We empower NPOs to achieve their goals by offering an extensive portfolio of services and solutions and by leveraging key partnerships with organisations that have the resources to directly benefit the communities where we work and live.

In 2023, we built scale, partnerships, network, and competency. To ensure the effectiveness of our programme, we executed the initiatives that were launched in 2022 and expanded in other areas to establish greater reach, continuing to provide excellent experiences to many non-profit clients. Internally, we grew our non-profit sales team by over 10 people and added customer success resources to help ensure clients are receiving fast and knowledgeable support. 

We launched two service ranges for non-profit customers, covering all major cloud platforms, based on the most pressing use cases brought to us by our non-profit customers. These include security, identity, data platform, business intelligence, volunteer management, disaster recovery, productivity and much more.

We launched the first non-profit services in Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace, with Amazon Connect Quickstart for Nonprofit being the first. This programme is providing deployment services of Amazon’s customer experience in a fixed engagement, designed to support a wide range of non-profit requirements ranging from critical response, to donor drives, to traditional customer support.

Our second AWS service, AWS DataLake Quickstart for Nonprofit, launched alongside SalesForce Cloud for Nonprofit, to collate essential non-profit data from CRM, ERP, SAAS platforms and other data sources into a single location, allows non-profits to better understand their wealth of data and to benefit from cloud scalability, analytics, and AI.

For Microsoft 365 and Azure, the Copilot Rapid Adoption Kit for Nonprofits was created to meet customer demand upon the launch of Microsoft 365 Copilot. A second service, Azure OpenAI for your Data Quickstart followed the launch of the Azure Private Preview to support organisations wanting to utilise Large Language and AI capabilities, without major upfront investment.

We developed our partnership with Tech to the Rescue, an organisation that connects non-profits needing tech assistance with companies providing the necessary skills and resources. We initiated a partnership with Avange.Tech, a technology services partner focused on the humanitarian and health sector – leveraging them as an extension to our delivery team to service even more clients. 

SoftwareOne expanded our partnership with TechSoup Global network, to reach more non-profits with our services. This accelerates our ability to offer services at scale to NPOs everywhere. Together, TechSoup and SoftwareOne will offer civil society organisations access to SoftwareOne’s core services offerings including Cloud Essentials for AWS and Microsoft Azure. Through this partnership, in 2023 we started working with NPOs in Denmark and Poland, and the rest of EMEA and the world will follow in 2024. This collaboration aims to simplify cloud management for non-profits, optimising efficiency and reducing operational costs while bridging the skills gap within organisations, and ensuring effective navigation of cloud environments.

We participated in and sponsored the annual Nethope Global Summit which was hosted in Munich Germany in October 2023. Nethope is a NPO that empowers global NGOs and mission-driven organisations by connecting them with technology partners to drive positive social impact. The summit brings together leaders and innovators in the non-profit and technology sectors to collaborate, share insights, and advance their collective mission of using technology for social good.

Third-party due diligence

Our ESG programme is about more than just our own actions. We are committed to ensuring that all those within our supply chain are held accountable and live up to the same ethical standards and ethos that we do.

Process and initial results

In 2023, we enhanced our third-party due diligence process with Integrity Next. This widely recognised platform allows our suppliers to complete a questionnaire that covers multiple topics such as environmental protection, energy management, data protection, anti-corruption, modern slavery, human rights (including child labour), conflict minerals, health & safety, conflicts of interest, diversity & inclusion, quality management and carbon footprint.

This assessment entails a risk-based selection process for our first-tier suppliers. This process identifies suppliers that pose the highest risk based on factors such as location and industry. The questionnaire provides a comprehensive assessment of the supplier’s practices, policies, and controls, allowing for a consistent and objective evaluation of supplier risk.

By using this process, our business can effectively manage supplier risks, mitigate potential vulnerabilities, and ensure compliance with applicable regulations and industry standards. It allows us to analyse the results, whilst also using the integrated risk rating system within Integrity Next, to determine next steps such as follow up actions or site visits if necessary.

In 2023, our Tier 1 suppliers, some new and some current, were onboarded and processed through our due diligence assessment. Of these, over 7,900 suppliers were included in our process for an abstract risk analysis, with over 1,000 invited to additional assessments relating to multiple ESG related topics, including their environmental and social impacts.

German Supply Chain Act

Given the introduction of the German Supply Chain Act, our German team have been prioritising our German suppliers in this process. Germany, the US, Switzerland and the Netherlands are the main geographical markets for SoftwareOne and represent approximately 49% of our total revenue. Germany accounts for approximately 20% of global revenue. These suppliers were divided into categories A, B and C depending on their sales strength, with the priority placed on our main A and B suppliers. Our suppliers are subjected to a risk analysis at a later stage (sector and country-specific).

All 5,449 of our German suppliers were uploaded to the IntegrityNext portal and underwent a risk analysis based on country risk and industry risk. In the first campaign, we identified and interviewed 314 A and B suppliers, and in the second campaign, the high-risk category C suppliers were interviewed in mid-January 2024 and results were shared in the 2024 IntegrityNext report.

To further support our compliance with this regulation, our Integrity Line is open to external interested parties who can raise any concerns with respect to our supply chain. In addition, we have introduced the first publicly accessible telephone hotlines to encourage additional ways to contact SoftwareOne.

Code of Conduct for business partners

We mandate all our third parties to adhere to our Supplier Code of Conduct. This code contains topics such as labour standards, discrimination and harassment, human rights (including child labour), the environment, anti-corruption, and grievance procedures. This allows us to ensure that all our third parties, including suppliers, review and sign off on this document.

Supplier diversity at SoftwareOne

SoftwareOne is engaged in several initiatives to enhance our supplier diversity. We are passionate about ensuring that our supply chain includes minority and under represented groups. Enabling this supports both our suppliers and our customers in their own efforts to increase supplier diversity.

Customer software portfolio diversity

SoftwareOne is actively involved in a programme to assess and prioritise the impact of the software and services we manage on diverse certified suppliers. 

The IT software products and services categories can be especially challenging from a supplier diversity perspective, and opportunities to directly attribute spend to diverse suppliers are inherently limited. Customer investment decisions in this category are primarily driven by technical and commercial priorities, making it more difficult to prioritise supplier diversity.

However, we are actively engaged in establishing a pilot programme to help our customers better address the challenges of supplier diversity in the Software & Services space. In the US, we have worked with leading supplier diversity partner, Supplier.io, to enhance reporting capabilities and support our clients’ disclosure obligations.

As part of our third-party due diligence programme over the coming years, we will improve our understanding of the diversity landscape of our suppliers at a global level and focus on enabling greater investment opportunities in diverse suppliers, for SoftwareOne and our customers alike.

Employee matters

Our goals and policies

Promoting an equal and inclusive culture, as well as a workplace that allows individuals to be the best versions of themselves within SoftwareOne, is and always will be at the core of who we are.

Our 2030 ambition to be an employer of choice for diversity continues to drive both our internal initiatives and external commitments. With the introduction of our new annual DEIB survey, it was imperative that we build a solid foundation of more data with our employees' perspectives. In addition, our overall DEIB strategy has taken further action to align with our talent acquisition and learning teams for more policies and processes to enable more diversity within our organisation.

Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB)

SoftwareOne prioritises and further develops our focus on DEIB by establishing an externally recognised global DEIB programme while continuing to support locally-developed initiatives.

In 2023, SoftwareOne grew to ~9,300 employees worldwide. We pride ourselves on our diversity, representing people of 60+ different nationalities, 30+ languages and a good representation of religious groups. By gender, the distribution is 64.3% men, 34.2% women and 1.5% other, and the average age is 37.

FTEs breakdown by region, by tenure and by gender
based on 2023 FTEs

Our DEIB strategy guides our efforts and measures our impacts with global KPIs. We create a culture for our employees and stakeholders that welcomes everyone into a safe and inclusive environment and which empowers more creativity and innovation, leading to the best possible client focus and experience.

DEIB survey

It has been challenging to estimate the diversity profiles at SoftwareOne based on the limited data available to us so far. In 2023, we conducted a global cultural assessment and audit focused on understanding the demographics of our workforce, as well as their personal reflections on inclusion and their sense of belonging. We worked with a third party to ensure anonymity, to prioritise data integrity and trust. Overall, 18% of our employees participated in the survey, giving us valuable information, although not wholly representative of the company. The raw data and its analysis will serve as a baseline for our DEIB strategy for the coming years.

The graphic below shows the diversity-related topics that our employees most want SoftwareOne to focus on. As part of our DEIB D&I strategy for the next two years, our focus areas are Gender, LGBTQ+, Ethnicity and Neurodiversity, showcasing our effective alignment with our employee’s priorities.

Employees diversity-related  priorities

Reflection on inclusion

In general terms, our employees value our DEIB efforts, and the culture that we are building collectively. Below, we can find the top highest rated statements.

DEIB is a priority for SoftwareOne; in 2024 we will be undertaking a cultural assessment, to ensure that our future efforts are aligned with our employees’ expectations to provide them with an inclusive and equitable place to work and grow. Our key performance indicator for the success of our survey is not only to increase results but also to critically increase the participation rate, aiming for 50% employee participation.

Women in senior leadership

Diverse representation is vital at all levels of an organisation. Part of SoftwareOne’s target for the coming years is to increase the representation of historically marginalised communities throughout the business. In 2023 the representation of women in senior leadership at SoftwareOne stood at 37%.

We want to highlight the stories of three women who recently became senior leaders.

Julia, an Executive Board member, joined SoftwareOne in November 2022 to oversee the areas of human resources, leadership development, talent acquisition and management. With more than 20 years of experience across all aspects of human resources in global, people-centric organisations, Julia will drive the company’s people strategy to ensure that it continues to attract, develop, and retain high-performing and diverse talent to fuel the growth journey.

I decided to work in the tech industry for several reasons. Firstly, it is a rapidly growing field with numerous job opportunities and enormous future business potential. Secondly, as a female leader, I bring diverse perspectives and ideas to the table, which can lead to more innovative and inclusive solutions. Working in tech allows women to be part of shaping the future through technological advancements, contributing to the development of society as a whole.

Julia Braun, Chief Human Resources Officer

Sonia joined SoftwareOne in 2014 and since then she has successfully managed and grown the Spanish business. She brings 20+ years of professional experience in the tech industry including senior leadership roles at Dell and Insight. She became a senior leader in October 2023, leading the entire LATAM business.

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships. I truly believe that teamwork has the incredible power to increase productivity, job satisfaction, and even each person’s individual performance.

Sonia Caso, Regional President Latin America

Another step to strengthen our management team is the integration of Marketing and Susanna into the senior leadership team in October 2023. Susanna joined SoftwareOne in January 2021 and since then has worked to build up a modern Marketing function in the company. She has 20+ years of professional experience in the tech industry including CMO roles at Diligent, Presidio, and Cognizant’s Digital Business division. A staunch LGBTQ ally, she is on the SoftwareOne Mosaic NORAM Board.

At heart, I’m a geek who believes that technology is the single most transformative force of our time. Since getting a double MBA in Marketing and Information Systems, I have been fortunate to ride this wave of change in the industry, both at start-ups and global category leaders. As a female leader and LGBTQ ally, I know how crucial it is to support nuanced perspectives and teams so we can contribute the most at SoftwareOne and beyond.

Susanna Parry-Hoey, Chief Marketing Officer

Mosaic: our employee resource groups

SoftwareOne is dedicated to cultivating a culture and company that is inclusive for everyone, enabling every Swomie to bring their true selves to work. Mosaics, SoftwareOne's regional Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), are dedicated to representing our workforce and the diverse communities and identities within SoftwareOne. The primary goal is to collaboratively contribute to creating a sense of community and belonging at SoftwareOne.

Mosaic was born in 2020 within NORAM and LATAM and in 2023 we expanded it to the rest of the regions, EMEA and APAC. Every regional Mosaic sets their own purpose and action plan aligned to the global DEIB strategy. Since the launch, Mosaic has amassed 31 members from EMEA, 12 from APAC, 21 from LATAM, and 7 from NORAM.

Some of the activities organised by some of our regional Mosaics are:

Mosaic LATAM – During the month of March, Mosaic LATAM focused on female empowerment, organising a series of events to highlight female representation in the workplace and providing a safe space to discuss gender inequalities. One of the events was an informal “tea time” conversation with two women in their fields, an Ambassador and a Permanent Secretary, where employees exchanged ideas and points of views in a casual and inviting environment.

Mosaic NORAM – In 2023, for Black History Month, Mosaic NORAM engaged in a month-long exploration of the acclaimed “1619” podcast. This in-depth exploration included live weekly syncs that allowed participants to engage in discussion about the subject with other employees. A capstone event, featuring Professor Norissa Williams allowed for an exploration of anti-blackness through storytelling. 71 Swomies participated in the exploration, and 105 Swomies attended the capstone event.

Pride at SoftwareOne

At SoftwareOne, we strongly believe in cultivating a culture that celebrates and embraces the unique qualities of everyone. We prioritise creating an environment where everyone feels not just accepted, but truly valued for their differences. For the first time in 2023, we celebrated Pride both on a global and local level. With initiatives focused on creating awareness, promoting constructive conversations and giving back to ensure everyone within SoftwareOne feels safe, comfortable, and accepted when being at work.

UN Free and Equal Donation Campaign

We launched a donations campaign to support the UN Free and Equal (UNFE). 1,613 Swomies ordered their Pride t-shirts, and thanks to their participation, we were able to donate CHF 20,000 to the UNFE.

ESG talk “We can all be allies” with Gina Battye

We had our first ESG talk “We can all be allies” with Gina Battye moderated by our CHRO Julia Braun, where we opened the conversation about allyship and inclusivity in the workplace. She gave us some good tips to apply in our day-to-day to make sure that we are all creating safe spaces to allow everyone to bring their true selves to work. 1,358 Swomies from around the world attended this ESG talk.

Stories of Pride

At SoftwareOne, we are proud of our multi-faceted base of Swomies worldwide. Every single one brings their unique background into the mix and enriches the SoftwareOne culture. For the second time, we invited our employees to share their stories of Pride, as an opportunity to share their journeys and create awareness. A big thank you to Katy Fant, Katie More and Jessica Bergman for participating and sharing their stories.

DEIB strategy

Our DEIB strategy supports our 2030 ambition of recognising SoftwareOne as a diverse employer, focusing on attracting diverse new talent and retaining our existing talent.

Attract

At SoftwareOne, as part of our DEIB efforts, we are prioritising increasing representation by cultivating a more diverse candidate pool. We’re dedicated to attracting talent that not only mirrors the diversity of the global society we operate in but also embraces and celebrates the rich tapestry of backgrounds within our Swomies community worldwide. Through proactive initiatives, we aim to create an environment where every individual feels seen, valued, and empowered, fostering a workforce that authentically represents the vibrant diversity of our world.

Talent acquisition

Numerous efforts have been made to ensure that our Talent Acquisition (TA) process is inclusive and fair to all communities. To ensure we are doing everything to attract candidates for suitable positions, we use online bias-checking tools to scan the language of our job adverts. We have also reviewed our hiring selection process, to ensure that our hiring leaders keep making fair and unbiased hiring decisions at SoftwareOne. Some of the actions taken are:

• Inclusive interview panels: we ensure every job hiring process has an inclusive interview panel to guarantee a balanced view and eliminate bias.
• Assessment tools: all our hiring processes involve market leading assessments such as Pymetrics and Criteria, to ensure the assessment process is non-discriminatory and that any subgroup differences are minimised.
• Hiring manager interview training: our vision is that every person who interviews within SoftwareOne has gone through our Global Interview Training programme; so far 400 hiring leaders around the globe have been trained. This training programme has been crafted to create a global interview standard that will enhance interviewers’ skills, enabling us to assess candidates more effectively, reduce bias and avoid hiring mistakes. This training is an essential foundation for building and sustaining a global standard.

Our gender diversity metrics from 2022 to 2023 reveal a significant positive shift. Female applications surged by an impressive 247%, which positively impacted our gender balance through the entire talent hiring funnel resulting in a 110% rise in offers extended to female candidates.

Our attraction rate was 30% women versus 70% men in 2022, improving to 34% and 66% in 2023, respectively. However, we recognise specific business areas, such as Software & Cloud Marketplace, Sales, and Business IT currently fall below this benchmark. In light of this, our primary focus this year remains to attract a more diverse pool of candidates, ensuring a comprehensive and inclusive talent landscape across all sectors.

Talent acquisition statistics 2023

The improvements seen in 2023 were achieved through a variety of initiatives during the year. Our talent acquisition teams in different global regions have been working towards our goal of attracting a more diverse pool of candidates. Below are some of the regional initiatives set forth to help achieve this goal.

Some of the plans we have for next year revolve around expanding our neurodiverse hiring pilot, developing a playbook for candidates with disabilities and offering a dedicated email address for accommodation requests throughout the hiring process. 

SoftwareOne Academy: strengthening our future talent pipeline

The Academy’s mission is to source, recruit, train, support and aid the transition of young and career-changing individuals from local communities worldwide into SoftwareOne, starting from grassroots level. The programme offers careers in technology to individuals from both traditional and non-traditional educational backgrounds in partnership with universities, charities, educational institutes and government bodies. The learning provided is tailored to meet the specific needs of service lines, roles, functions, and geographic requirements. The curriculum covers technical, business, language, consulting, and soft skills to enable associates to succeed in our global professional services organisation.

Now in its fourth year, the SoftwareOne Academy exists in over 20 countries delivering over 25 curricula across Sales, Services, Business IT (BIT) and Global Services Delivery (GSDC) Operations. 72 cohorts have run in 32 cities with 514 learners either currently in the programme or transitioned to full-time employees at SoftwareOne, representing a 91% transition rate to business.

In 2023, the Academy won:

• “Best Onboarding Programme of the Year” at the L&D Summit and Awards in India.
• “People Development” at the Merit Awards in Barcelona.
• Finalist in the category of “Excellence in Graduation Recruitment and Development” from HR Excellence Awards 2023 APAC.
• Finalist at the Learning Technologies awards 2023 for Best use of blended learning.

The effectiveness of our programme secures our continued recognition by the EU Pact for Skills and the EU’s European Alliance for Apprenticeships. This also supported the Academy in DACH to be the winner of the “Best Place to Learn, Germany” for our apprentice programmes.

In 2023, the Academy launched SOAR, our 12-week Returnship Programme, focused on supporting professionals who have taken a break from their careers and wish to return to work. This programme offers a unique blend of training and hands-on experience to support people in relaunching their careers. It is available in multiple countries, including Spain, India, Brazil, Colombia, and China.

The Academy continues to transition learners to permanent roles. There is an Alumni Group called Amplify, which aims to foster networking and collaboration beyond the Academy programme, helping our young people to continue developing themselves, build their careers and spheres of influence, and lean on each other through their progression.

Retain

To retain our talent, SoftwareOne is implementing a strategy focused on learning and development, and employee engagement. This strategy is backed up with data, such as employee turnover rate, which allows us to understand our workforce and monitor and measure the performance of our initiatives.

We are prioritising educational programmes on DEIB topics and skills for both our leadership team and our employees, and we measure these programmes with KPIs like hours of training per employee and employee participation. Our company culture plays a crucial role in employee retention, which is why SoftwareOne is focusing on supporting employee networks through Mosaic and measuring its success with KPIs like employee engagement and events or activities organised by these groups.

Learning and development (L&D)

During 2023, the yearly training hours per capita was 8.75. The graphic below disaggregates this information by gender and employee category. If we compare the numbers with the 2022 period, the average training hours increased this year. The biggest increase was with managers, increasing from 6.5 training hours in 2022 to 12 hours in 2023. These numbers help us measure the effectiveness of our L&D strategy and initiatives.

Training hours for 2022-2023

The abovementioned positive trend is a result of the efforts put in place throughout the year. We integrated a new Learning Experience Platform, which allowed us to provide a space where employees could visit an all-encompassing location for their learning needs, be it technical, functional, leadership or personal development, reaching over 4,000 monthly users.

We also brought back in-person and hybrid sessions in some of our L&D offerings, in addition to the online offering that is still available. In our professional development space, we offered workshops including Radical Candor and Owning Your Career, delivering over 50 workshops to over 800 participants. For our leadership development, we launched the Experienced Leader Programme and Leading@SoftwareOne with equal numbers of leaders engaged in solutions specifically tailored to their needs. We also introduced the new leaders programme, for early-in-career leaders, in both DACH and EMEA, which will roll out globally in the coming months.

Along with these efforts, the L&D team at SoftwareOne was engaged in supporting local teams and newly acquired groups like Beniva in Canada, in the development of local offerings.

Remuneration policy

SoftwareOne’s total rewards guiding principles are applicable to all compensation and benefit programmes offered within SoftwareOne and are rooted in our philosophy and objectives as an organisation. The guiding principles aim to ensure alignment with SoftwareOne’s business strategy, provide motivation for our people, and to remain competitive within the markets in which we compete for talent. Reward programs are compared with our competitive peer company groups. SoftwareOne uses different comparator groups for the various businesses and markets in which we are active.

Tracking employee satisfaction

In early 2023, SoftwareOne ran its annual employee engagement survey. We are proud to have achieved a 73% response rate from our global headcount. Throughout 2023, we have took care to incorporate the feedback received and further build engagement across our organisation.

The four statements below that most of our employees "strongly agree" or "agree" with, are also a testament to SoftwareOne’s culture and how much they enjoy being part of it and shaping it on a daily basis.

The next engagement survey will run in Q4 2024 and seeks to measure improvements in engagement, retention, performance, and employee satisfaction.

We are immensely pleased with the recognition received in APAC from the Employee Engagement of the Year award – “Business Management Excellence Awards 2023”. This prestigious award serves to highlight the work of our People and Culture teams focusing on inspiration, inclusivity, and motivation for our people.

Developing our employees

In line with our commitment to fostering a culture of continuous improvement and employee development, where we can support the professional growth and success of our employees, SoftwareOne provides our employees with a robust performance review framework designed to aid them and their managers in regular performance and career development reviews. We introduced this framework in 2023; 100% of our sales employees undertook target-based reviews and 68% of our overall company employees undertook comprehensive reviews covering performance, development, and organisational goals.

Rewarding strong performance

SoftwareOne believes that strong performance deserves recognition and reward. We have a comprehensive employee rewards and recognition philosophy which focuses on target achievement of individuals, teams, and the region they belong to, driven by our company strategy. Our bonuses are awarded to every individual in the organisation, truly driving the message that success comes from collaboration and teamwork.

To support a high-performance culture, SoftwareOne has established the President’s Club, which celebrates the contribution of our employees with four-days of culture, relaxation, food, fun and party in some of the most iconic locations in the world. In 2023 we celebrated in Istanbul.

Whilst the President’s Club is a fantastic recognition of the hard work of our highest performers, there is a social responsibility side to this programme. In 2023 our winners helped restore the natural beauty of the Black Sea and collaborated with bestselling author Jess French in the creation of a children’s book on climate change. You can read more details on this in our Spotlight Story.