Called “Change Starts Here”, BESydney has confirmed that it has implemented a new framework to help international organisers bringing their event to Sydney kickstart major changes in how their meetings contribute to society.
Extending its involvement in hosting international gatherings in Sydney further than simply securing meetings and conferences for the city, BESydney’s team is now actively working with international organisers to understand potential bigger-picture social outcomes for each event and using the agency’s connections to help realise these impacts.
“We want our business events delegates to meet the people, enjoy the place and discover a shared purpose, in Sydney,” said BESydney’s CEO, Lyn Lewis-Smith.
“Business events are a powerful platform for tackling and solving the difficult problems in our world through the exchange of knowledge and ideas, the pooling of resources and solutions that come from collaboration between a diverse range of global participants.
“BESydney wants to be part of the solution and we know that Sydney offers a unique environment that is welcoming, inclusive, safe, sustainably focused and delivers solutions through innovation,” she said.
While world-changing social impacts from business events can be difficult to identify and track because they can take years – sometimes even decades – to emerge, BESydney is hoping to start organisers on a path to major social change as a result of choosing Sydney as their event destination.
BESydney’s work in driving social impact has already been recognised by Global Destination Sustainability Movement and #MEET4IMPACT which chose the organisation as the first recipient of its Impact Award earlier this month, for developing and implementing this new framework.
Although only announcing their social impact agenda now, BESydney has already helped some events crystalise their social objectives, including the organiser of the FDI World Dental Congress, which was held at ICC Sydney last month for more than 10,000 participants, making it the largest dental event ever held in the Southern Hemisphere.
“I met the team at Business Events Sydney a year ago and we started to work on a framework together,” said the FDI World Dental Federation’s congress and continuing education director, Laetitia Reymond.
“We went through all the expectations we had as the federation and all the stakeholders we wanted to involve in this project. The impact assessment framework was extremely involved in defining what we really wanted to achieve in the long term. By defining these overall goals, we actually created something much bigger.”
