Community engagement

Sharing our skills

We create socio-economic value by using our skills and experience to engage with and help local communities, measuring our impact and encouraging a network-wide focus on capacity-building and education.

All PwC firms are involved in their local communities through a vast range of projects, from supporting youth education and leadership programmes to helping social entrepreneurs and local charities. This is a core part of our PwC culture, and we regularly contribute our time, skills and resources.

While our goal is to make a difference in the communities where we work by sharing our time and knowledge, PwC people also benefit from new skills, enhanced personal fulfilment and deeper local relationships.

We’re developing capacity-building projects, which seek to strengthen the business skills and expertise of charities and other partners in the not-for-profit sector. Capacity-building is one of the most useful ways to support our communities: it ensures that the work undertaken adds strategic value to organisations and maximises PwC’s impact.

We’re contributing to disaster recovery. In response to the tragic 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, for example, PwC disaster recovery experts from Japan and other firms around the world formed a Japan Recovery Taskforce to support the rebuilding process. The PwC team leveraged skills, knowledge and experience gained from previous large-scale disaster restoration and recovery processes. The PwC Global CEO Pulse Survey gauging CEO’s perspectives on Japan’s recovery and a global seminar were the first initiatives undertaken by the taskforce.

We’re supporting education programmes. Many of our firms are involved in local initiatives to support education. For example, PwC’s Open University in the US offers free and open access to a selection of courses developed by PwC. In Indonesia, PwC has run a programme to mentor young leaders. In China, PwC partners with NGOs to run the Rural School Volunteer Programme, which sends volunteers to rural village primary schools for a week to lead fun, interactive classes in English, computer literacy, environmental awareness and physical education. PwC in Hungary partnered with a client to support a kindergarten that provides free services to children with multiple disadvantages. In Chad, a partnership between the Office of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and PwC built and improved schools for over 16,000 refugee children who fled the conflict in Darfur. PwC business and project management skills helped create an approach now being applied to other Chad refugee camps.

We’re supporting social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs create socio-economic value for their communities. For example, PwC supports and promotes social entrepreneurs in the Czech Republic, Spain, and the UK.

We’re raising reporting standards in the not-for-profit sector. We aim to help non-profits report their results effectively and accurately. The PwC Transparency Awards were established in 2004 by PwC in the Netherlands to recognise the quality and transparency of reporting by not-for-profit organisations. They have since been introduced by other PwC firms around the world, including Australia, Canada, Germany, and Korea.