Since its launch in 2017, Diversity Charter in Slovakia has organized a variety of activities not only for signatories of the Charter (companies, NGOs, public institutions), but also for a broader public. Our mission is to provide a concrete inspiration for implementation of specific D&I measures, and thus improve working environment towards higher empathy, respect and psychological safety. We believe that this way the Slovak workplaces will become more inclusive and that will have a long-term positive effect on the Slovak society as a whole. By implementation of this project, we aimed to find answers to the following questions: Which types of event formats are the most effective and attractive enough for employers in Estonia and Finland? How to balance effectively offline and online educational and awareness-raising activities? Which specific topics and measures for employers should be addressed because of the current trends? More precisely, the outcomes that we wanted to achieve were as follows: 1. Strengthening of organization skills and competences (in terms of gained tips for new formats of events) and 2. Broadening knowledge in D&I thematic area (in terms of gained tips for new topics that we could cover).
Pontis Foundation, founded in 1997, is a leading Slovak foundation focusing on 3 key topics: Strategic philanthropy, Sustainability/ESG and Social Innovations. These three pillars are quite robust and contain a broad range of projects and activities. Within the Sustainability/ESG pillar, Pontis focuses on companies . It runs an informal association of companies committed to responsible business-making called Business Leaders Forum, as well as its sub-platform focused on Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) called Diversity Charter. There are Diversity Charters in 26 EU countries and the Slovak Charter is a part of this European platform since 2017. The charters provide educational and networking opportunities on a broad range of D&I topics for diversity/HR managers. The project offered an opportunity for job-shadowing in two other charters, in Estonia and in Finland, and thus enabled effective best practice sharing and strenghtening of know-how for Slovak Diversity Charter represented by Ivana Vagaská, head of ESG team in Pontis & executive director of Business Leaders Forum.