With the objective of initiating a dialog on stakeholder transformation through ‘Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility’, CSR Sri Lanka will host its first “Banking Sector Forum” on 20th October. 

CSR Sri Lanka as the first national apex body and as a catalyst of the concept of ‘transformative CSR’, now takes the ownership in driving and aligning private sector towards more nationally important, impactful and relevant  CSR engagement as  part of their business practices. 

Following the successful launch of CSR Sri Lanka in October 2014, in April 2015, three sessions were conducted for heads of private sector companies, senior government officials, and CSR practitioners to drive the concept of “Transformative CSR’ and to emphasize the importance of public and private sector collaboration. Stemming from those initiatives a strong dialog has been built up between the private sector, government sector and CSR Sri Lanka on different CSR initiatives. 

Next step of this collaboration is to bring the country’s CSR efforts in to a common sustainable platform. As part of this exercise, CSR Sri Lanka is now taking the initiative to focus on different business sectors that contribute to the country’s economic growth. Each industry sector in Sri Lanka, currently spend a considerable amount on various project based CSR activities.  The first sector focused forum will be organized exclusively for the ‘Banking Sector’ as the contribution of the banking sector to the CSR activities of the country is quite significant. 

CSR Sri Lanka has taken an important direction in the Banking Sector Forum to discuss the path that banks should take towards ‘Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility’. Since the banking sector has a higher capacity in the light of the wider stakeholder group that they are engaged with, it is timely that we discuss about the opportunities of that sector to be engaged in stakeholder transformation. 

This would be an ideal forum to review the insights of CSR practices and experiences within the sector. The forum will capture the perspectives of international practices, government relations and private sector practices on CSR done by the Banking Sector through actual industry cases. Eminent personality; Deepal Sooriaarachchi will then discuss the cases presented and how these could be transformed to incorporate stakeholder transformation and will provide insights for the sustainable way forward. 

The event will be held at Hilton Colombo Residences from 7.30 – 9.30am as a breakfast forum with exclusive participation over 45 of CSR Practitioners of the private and state banking sector by invitation. 

The forum is organized in collaboration with Millenium IT Group as the Strategic Event Partner, Sampath Bank PLC as an event sponsor.