Our education platform

Investing in education

Global Communities has two specific areas of focus: education and climate change. That education matters to us particularly should not come as a surprise. After all, PwC, at its core, is a learning-based enterprise. Every year, tens of thousands of PwC people—from campus recruits to experienced hires, to partners both recent and long-term—participate in a variety of internal education programmes aimed at refreshing their technical skills, deepening their professional competence, broadening their knowledge of particular industries, and developing in them qualities of responsible leadership.

By responsible leadership, we mean a leadership style that relies on a "moral compass" to guide decision-making and behaviours. Responsible leaders manage for the common good and gain authority and legitimacy in direct proportion to their success in serving others. The stakeholders we serve expect PwC to demonstrate responsible leadership; and we in turn feel a special obligation to pass on the ethos of responsible leadership to those who will soon become tomorrow's leaders. We think we can do that best by getting involved and staying involved in a range of forward-looking educational initiatives.

Many of our individual member firms have already established an impressive track record in underwriting highly successful educational programmes. While the educational programmes of our individual member firms may differ widely in terms of size and scope, they share some important similarities. Typically, our educational initiatives:

• Draw on PwC's knowledge of the local community and deep experience in training and educating its own people.
  
  
• Target disadvantaged or socially marginalised youth.
  
  
• Promote the development of young people's business acumen and employability.
  
  
• Engage PwC people as volunteers in order to expose them—in both theory and practice—to the concept of responsible leadership.

These commonalities provide Global Communities with an excellent template for developing a focused and unified approach to education across the entire PwC organisation. Global Communities is in the early stages of developing such an approach.