Leisure Leagues claims UNGC Award

KARACHI: Leisure Leagues, the small-sided football organisers, have claimed ‘Living the Global Compact Best Practices Sustainability Award 2018’ in the SME category for their support to UNGC principles and initiatives of sustainability through football.

Winning this prestigious award signifies Leisure League’s commitment towards enhancing the quality of life and contributing to a healthier future, in complete alignment with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Leisure Leagues have partnered with United Nations’ agencies and with a broad base of Pakistani companies looking at enhancing their CSR and Sustainability Agenda. The Pan Pakistan football leagues have reached more than 50,000 children so far.

The initiatives have focused on developing advocacy for the UN, promoting and demonstrating gender equality, embedding life skills for young people and displaced people and using the power of sport to convene wider community influencers and stakeholders.

“Leisure Leagues made a promise to implement and promote UNGC principles in letter and spirit within our core business and its area of influence when we signed the Global Compact towards the mid of last year,” Ishaq Shah, Chief Operating Officer of Leisure Leagues, said. “We have seen ourselves since then as one of the many Pakistani Goalkeepers of the SDGs, fully committed to both implementing UN Sustainable Development Goals and keen to build that with Pakistan’s youth and communities in the course of company’s business operations and special initiatives. We want to do it in a way that is sustainable as we grow our business and reach over the coming years,” added Ishaq.

Speaking at the Sustainability Event and Award Ceremony hosted by the UN Global Compact in Karachi, Zubair Anwar-Bawany, Global Director for Partnerships and Social Impact, gave a summary of Leisure League’s Social Impact Roadmap across 29 cities in Pakistan and how sports, football in particular, became powerful tools to bring people together and communicate important messages about the development agenda on a massive scale.

“We have always believed that football presents a unique activist platform for engaging stakeholders from all sectors of society to invest in children and more broadly in communities. It’s one of the smartest ways to invest in society,” he added.

Fasihul Karim Siddiqi, Executive Director, Global Compact Network Pakistan, praised Leisure Leagues Pakistan for winning the prestigious award. He said Leisure Leagues is one of the few companies from Pakistan which were invited to share their experience and insights at the World Leaders Summit held in New York in September last year.