5T Sports
5T Sports
Which of the 17 SDGs is your organization working towards and actively promoting?
Please describe the actions/objectives towards achieving the SDGs that you have selected above.
Goal 5 – Gender Equality
5T developed Supplier Diversity Canada, on behalf of Women’s Enterprise Centre of BC, to advocate for inclusive purchasing practices. This supplier registry and information portal fosters relationship building between large public/private sector buyers and women- and diversity-owned businesses.
5T is a longstanding advocate for Diversity & Inclusion in business, presenting workshops and consulting on inclusive business practices, serving as an advisor to the National Roundtable on Supplier Diversity and a representative to the Pacific Rim Supplier Advisory Council. Personally, Aileen is a champion of women business owners, advising and mentoring dozens of companies.
Goal 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities
5T has developed a Local Business Engagement Program for Major Event Host Cities (Olympics, FIFA) that supports early and effective communications with local SMEs on business opportunities. The program builds local business capacity, lowers the carbon footprint of events and provides greater economic return on public investment in hosting international events. In Canada, it has been delivered for the Canada Games and the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
On an ongoing basis, 5T works with multiple levels of government, the private sector and professional associations to address advancing local and social procurement.
Goal 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production
5T Sports guides professional sports teams, venues and events to reduce energy, water and waste and to leverage their high profile to influence fans to do the same. We provide sustainability audits and guide our clients to support the principles of the Paris Agreement and the SDGs.
5T shares best practices through education events with the Supply Chain Management Association, emphasizing often unseen environmental and social costs and benefits.
Goal 13 – Climate Action
5T’s work centers on climate impact mitigation, specifically Goal 13.1: to strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacity of the sports industry. Toward this 5T is currently in development of an open access global database of best practices in direct support of the UNFCCC Sports for Climate Action initiative.
On Goal 13.2, 5T works toward national-level policy changes that promote climate action:
- Mandated local/social procurement targets for all federally funded major sports events. These budgets exceed $1B yet have no climate-related goals. 5T has spoken, petitioned and advocated with elected officials on this matter since 2013.
- Inclusion of the Right to a Clean Environment in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. 5T works with the David Suzuki Foundation and its Blue Dot Movement to advocate municipally and federally for the recognition of citizen-led climate action.
For Goal 13.3, 5T has developed a university course module in sports & event management, entitled ‘Sustainable by Design: Creating Triple Bottom Line Impact Sports Events, which specifically educates on the SDGs. Delivered at 8 institutions across the US & Canada to date.
Goal 17 – Partnerships for the Goals
5T is one of eight global organizations (sole Canadian representative) on the UNFCCC Sport Climate Leadership working group.
5T’s entire business practice revolves around bringing together partnerships of professional sports organizations, corporate brands and NGOs to advance the goals.
Please specify the impact of your organization’s actions on the SDGs that you have selected above.
Goal 5 – Gender Equality
The launch and promotion of the Supplier Diversity Canada Database alongside the Women’s World Cup included:
- 23 educational/matchmaking events across 7 cities reaching 3600+ business owners
- 15,752 Twitter impressions, 1,700 unique viewers and 221 new followers
- 8,297 unique visitors to the Supplier Diversity Canada portal, with 12,484 total visits and 110K page views
As an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Aileen has
- advised 56 companies one-on-one, building women’s economic participation in the economy
- conducted outreach for Women’s Enterprise Centre at 62 events ; and
- presented 3 Unconscious Bias training workshops –reaching over 500 individuals.
Goal 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities
In Canada, 5T has delivered local business engagement program for two events, the 2015 Canada Games in Prince George and the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
For the Canada Games, 5T worked with The Ann Duffy Group, who developed the games’ sustainability guide. The program supported local business’ understanding of, and ability to deliver, goods and services to the games.
5T also worked with a consortium of 8 agencies to create a coordinated vision and strategy for regional growth using the Games as a catalyst. The resulting strategy provided a collaborative approach to the region’s labour recruitment efforts, tourism development and local economy support. A third element of the work was a downtown business renewal program to better reflect and attract the region’s revitalization. In total, the work included 10 workshops and reached over 100 businesses.
The FIFA Women’s World Cup project worked with over 40 partners across 7 cities. 5T provided each city with a full toolkit, enabling them to replicate our local business engagement program for future hosted events.
5T has begun a very active outreach program to the next generation of sports and sustainability professionals. Sports facilities are where cities and communities gather, making them an ideal showcase for sustainable operations management. They are also a high visibility communications platform. 5T has developed a university course module called “Sustainable by Design: Creating Events with Triple Bottom Line Returns.” To date it has been delivered to over 300 students at the following institutions: UCLA, University of South Carolina, University of Iowa, Temple University, Depaul University, University of Central Florida and Capilano University.
Goal 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production
A sample outcome of 5T’s sustainability audits for a baseball franchise identified $23,000 in immediate cost savings through 70% energy and ~30% water usage reductions. A prioritized roadmap outlined further savings of $65,000 in the next 3-5 years.
Continuing education presented by 5T has reached over 400 members of the Supply Chain Management Association, emphasizing triple bottom line returns through total life cycle accounting and social procurement.