On October 13, 2022, at the prestigious awards for responsible business, Reuters Events selected the winners of sixteen categories, including the Purpose-Driven Communications category.
The Reuters Awards are the world's leading awards, which for thirteen years have highlighted the best projects in multiple sectors to ensure a sustainable future for all.
Ten companies made it to the finals of the Purpose-Driven Communications category, including ELES, the Electricity Transmission System Operator of the Republic of Slovenia. With a long-term partner, the non-profit association EN-LITE, which strengthens the profession's voice in education about energy, energetics, and climate change, ELES submitted a project to strengthen energy and climate literacy for evaluation. With the in-depth knowledge of ELES experts and substantive cooperation of partner organizations, ELES provides key informative content that empowers young generations:
- to make informed decisions about energy and energy use based on an understanding of impacts and consequences;
- tracking energy flows and thinking in terms of energy systems;
- awareness of how much energy they use, for what and where this energy comes from.
M.Sc. Mojca Drevenšek, president of the association for strengthening energy literacy EN-LITE welcomes the inclusion of ELES as a finalist for the Reuters Events award for responsible business in the category of communication with a purpose: "ELES is the main supporter and permanent partner of our association's activities in the field of strengthening energy and climate literacy. The ELES company's experts in the infrastructure and operation of the electric power system, strategic innovations, and other key areas share their knowledge with the stakeholders with whom we cooperate through the association. These are mainly high school students, researchers, and young employees. We look forward to furthering cooperation in the field of strengthening energy and climate literacy, the latter becoming one of the central topics of public and media discussions in light of the crisis in the field of reliability and the price of energy supply in Slovenia and more broadly in the EU."
Katja Fašink, chief communications officer at System Operator ELES, adds that the joint partnership focus with EN-LITE is on raising awareness, involving and empowering young people to become even more determined energy and climate ambassadors who actively participate in the creation of realistic scenarios and professionally supported decisions about our energy future. "The social, economic, and environmental impacts of the energy and climate decisions we make today will be felt by young people in a decade or more. At ELES, we are well aware of this and therefore strive for a responsible and inclusive attitude towards all young people who care about the energy future of Slovenia and Europe. In cooperation with EN-LITE, we offer them modern, digitally-supported educational and awareness-raising tools, with which young people can strengthen their position in energy and climate decision-making processes," Fašink emphasizes.
The selected expert evaluation committee of Reuters Events, after reviewing all submitted contributions for purpose-driven communications, based on criteria adapted to each category, key principles of clearly set and achieved results and measurements, measurable evidence of innovation, impact, and scalability, with a demonstrable long-term commitment to sustainable transformation, pointed out that it is a strong and highly demanding category.
When the winners were announced in the Purpose-Driven Communications category, the first prize went to the chain of shopping centers in the Philippines, SM Supermalls, with the project Ensuring healthy shoppers, paving the way to national economic recovery, through which they showed synergy with the government's implementation of many programs that changed the country's response to the covid-19 pandemic. Among the finalists were also Ripple Energy with the project It's your green power, own it, and the American 3M with the project Shattering Stereotypes with “Not the Science Type,” which aims to address negative stereotypes and the need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the British Boots UK with the Back to School program, which helps children and schools with basic hygiene products, Hard Rock International with the project Online safety literacy for young people, the American Levi Strauss & Co. with the project Leading the Business Community on Gun Violence prevention and the leading global financial institution Goldman Sachs with the project One Million Black Women.
M.Sc. Mojca Drevenšek, president of the association for strengthening energy literacy EN-LITE and Katja Fašink, chief communications officer at Slovenia's Electricity Transmission System Operator ELES.