Smart Business Initiatives (SBI)

“Smart Business Initiative” (SBI) Alliance

The SBI Alliance provides an informal framework that aims to reduce hazardous child labour in urban informal sectors by removing hazardous conditions from work through advocacy and awareness raising campaigns, workplace improvement programs based on the “nexus” between improved working conditions and enhanced business performance and incentives and support services to employers.

A diverse group of organizations are brought together under the SBI Alliance on the basis of common values that are rooted in the notion that fighting hazardous child labour will uphold human, labour and child rights, promote and demonstrate Occupational Safety and Health standards and strengthen SME competitiveness, including Corporate Social Responsibilities. The Alliance will make effective use of each organisation’s comparative advantage(s) and strategic linkages, create a synergy of action that will generate mutually reinforced impact and win-win opportunities for all partners.

The Immediate Objectives formulated for the period 2008– 2010 of the SBI Alliance are:

i) Members of the SBI Alliance and their recipients will have further developed and strengthened their institutional, technical and financial capacity in the combat against hazardous child labour;

ii) Awareness of beneficiaries, other major stakeholders, such as Government (national and local), employers, workers and their representatives and society at large on the need to reduce hazardous child labour through workplace improvement programs will have been increased; and

iii) At least 2000 employers and 8000 workers (child labourers above the legal age for work and adults) will have been benefited from hazardous free work through the development and implementation of replicable models.

The partners to the SBI-Alliance are:

Ø Aparajeyo Bangladesh

Ø Bangladesh Engineering Industry Owners Association (BEIOA)

Ø Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI)

Ø Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS)

Ø Bangladesh Occupational Safety, Health and Environment (OSHE) Foundation

Ø Bangladesh Trade Union Centre (BTUC)

Ø Better Business ((BB)

Ø Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Centre

Ø Development Policy and Research Centre (DPRC)

Ø International Labour Organisation (ILO) – TBP-UIE project

Ø Safety Assistance for Emergencies (SAFE)

Ø Save the Children, Sweden-Denmark

Ø Save the Children, UK

Ø Subhida Banchito Manab Unnayan Sangsthah (SUBMUS)

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