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In late September the Walt Disney Company received what I would consider one of the highest possible honors: the Jane Goodall Institute Global Leadership Award. This might not be a trophy for anything related to movies, and I’ve always said I wish that the company’s main focus was movies, but like it or not Disney’s a global conglomerate now. If they must be so, then at least they’re the type getting one of the top tributes a big company can get.
The Jane Goodall Institute Global Leadership Awards are given out to people and companies whom the Institute, including its famous founder and namesake, feels carry out important work in social responsibility and conversation. Obviously, given the particular institute about which we’re talking, the focus for the social responsibility is the environment and animal conservation.
As such Walt Disney Co. was given the Corporate Social Responsibility Award. Beth Stevens, Senior Vice President for Corporate Citizenship in Environment and Conservation, was chosen to physically receive the award from Jane Goodall herself.
When I think of Disney and conservation my mind immediately leaps to the Animal Kingdom. The park is constantly working both at its Orlando location and across the globe to help save and preserve various animal species. While the Animal Kingdom is a large part and major representative of the Walt Disney Company’s environmental and animal conservation efforts, it’s not the only part.
The fact that the Walt Disney Company employs a person specifically for the field of Corporate Citizenship in Environment and Conservation is telling. We learn two things from this: one, that the Animal Kingdom is in fact not the Disney Co.’s only conservation effort, that there is more on the corporate level, and two, that there are likely other branches of Corporate Citizenship at the House of Mouse, otherwise Stevens would just be VP of Environment and Conservation.
Of course this shouldn’t come as any major surprise. We’ve covered Disney’s other social and environmental efforts, such as the VoluntEARS and Clean the World, and I constantly see stories of them donating money to the cause. There just isn’t much to say beyond a few sentences about money donations, but I’ll do it here: in her Disney Parks blog post about the award, Stevens announced that Disney Co. will donate $2 million to various conservation projects around the world this year. That’s the highest they’ve ever spent for the cause in a single year.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again (briefly), I might disagree with many of Disney’s new corporate policies, but I still think the company is worthy of much commendation for putting so much effort into social responsibility. I’ve wondered whether or not many other large companies do this, and I just don’t hear about it because I don’t follow them the way in which I follow the Disney company, but the Goodall Institute award indicates that Disney is among the cream of the crop, in this subject anyway.
Other 2011 recipients of the Jane Goodall Institute Global Leadership Awards included Esri (a software development company) for Excellence in Conservation Science, George Miller, U.S. Representative for California’s 7th District, for Excellence in Public Policy, and musician Dave Matthews for Responsible Activism in Media and Entertainment.
Related Articles:
International Day of Forests at the Animal Kingdom
Disney Internship Opportunities
Disney Scientists Learn the Language of Elephants
Lilly Diabetes – Disney Partnership
*(This image by nick step is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
