Beyond Beads 'n Trinkets: Wayne Dunn and the MDBs
Tackle Corporate Social Responsibility

With relationships between local communities and corporate activities becoming increasingly important, businesses that demonstrate social responsibility are finding many advantages in areas from acquiring project opportunities to obtaining financing and hiring top personnel. This trend has created a niche for the expertise of Wayne Dunn & Associates Ltd. (WDA), a small international consulting and communications firm. WDA credits its relationships with multilateral development banks (MDBs) and the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service for helping it to complete 40 social responsibility projects in 26 countries. These include assessments of economic development opportunities in Papua New Guinea and in Nicaragua, funded respectively by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Based near Victoria, British Columbia, WDA provides strategic advice and support to businesses and organizations that focus on integrating financial and social-value creation strategies into their profit-making activities. "For businesses, especially those in extractive industries, sustainable development represents a growing challenge with significant bottom-line impacts," says Wayne Dunn, founding partner. "Firms must move beyond ‘beads 'n trinkets' approaches and embrace mutually beneficial and cost-effective relationships with local communities and other development stakeholders. Building long-term relationships with the MDBs is an important step in this process."

Close ties with Canada's Trade Commissioner Service have also been instrumental in the firm's success, according to Dunn. "We have had excellent support from trade staff around the world. From the Office of Liaison with International Financial Institutions in Washington, D.C., to our embassies and consulates in Port of Spain, Ankara, Quito, Johannesburg, Accra, Lima and others, our needs and those of our clients have been met quickly, insightfully and extremely professionally."

Economic development in Papua New Guinea
In 2001, WDA was recruited by the World Bank to conduct a pilot study on mining and local economic development at two key sites in Papua New Guinea. With mining and petroleum accounting for 70 percent of the country's total exports, the sector employs a substantial workforce, including those indirectly involved in the supply of related goods and services. WDA's strategic plans were used to support pilot development projects at the Porgera gold mine, a Placer Dome joint venture located in the remote highlands, and Lihir, the world's 17th-largest gold mine, situated on a remote island in Papua New Guinea's Bismark Archipelago.

Battling inequality for Afro-Latinos
In recent years, the international development community has intensified efforts to address structural factors that systematically exclude racial or ethnic groups, contributing to situations of chronic poverty and underdevelopment around the world. This issue is of particular importance to the roughly 150 million Latin Americans of Indigenous and African descent, who largely remain segregated in specific areas of their countries. A case in point is Nicaragua, where the majority of Afro-Latino and Indigenous descendants are concentrated on the Atlantic coastal region, the most impoverished and isolated area of the country. WDA was contracted by the IDB in 2001 to assist with a major expansion of an IDB-financed rural development program aimed at strengthening the socio-economic and political participation of these isolated communities. Besides preparing a comprehensive set of project prototypes, the WDA team conducted a series of community dialogues and economic analyses over the course of a year.

Diverse projects worldwide
In South Africa, WDA assisted Placer Dome to develop and implement a strategic plan to mitigate the social and economic impact of mine modernization and the retrenchment of thousands of laid-off workers, and to address HIV/AIDS. The firm also worked with Placer Dome to develop the AIDS Campaign Team Mining program, which was submitted to the World Bank's Development Marketplace—the de-facto world championships of development innovation. This project competed against more than 2,400 others from 122 countries to take home the Development Innovation Award, as well as a People's Choice Award. Another project that WDA developed for Placer Dome won the 2004 Nexen Award for Corporate Social and Ethical Responsibility.

Other MDB-backed projects undertaken by WDA include a strategy for the commercialization of the Ghana News Agency as part of a multi-year public sector reform program funded by the World Bank; a strategic approach to incorporate Indigenous concerns into oil and gas openings in Ecuador on behalf of the IDB; recommendations for enhancing the long-term, sustainable impact on Indigenous communities of Conoco's Polar Lights project in northwestern Russia, funded by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; and an IDB-administered Canadian Technical Assistance Program (CANTAP) for Indigenous development in Peru.

For more information, contact:

International Financing Division
International Trade Canada
Tel.: (613) 995-7251
E-mail: ifinet@dfait-maeci.gc.ca

or

Mr. Wayne Dunn, Founding Partner,
Wayne Dunn & Associates Ltd.
Tel.: (604) 683-7617
E-mail: Wayne@waynedunn.com
Internet: www.waynedunn.com