Zain Group participates in ‘Global Goals for Sustainable Development’ awareness campaign

- Global Goals campaign seeks reach 7 billion people in 7 days **

- Aligned with Zain Group’s sustainability agenda to alleviate extreme poverty, inequality, and climate change in the next 15 years

Kuwait, New York – 30 September, 2015

Zain Group, a leading mobile telecom innovator across the Middle East and Africa, has announced its support of a combined effort with 26 mobile operator Groups to reach seven billion people in seven days with text messages of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. The text message campaign that commenced on September 26 and will run for a week until October 3, 2015 will see 125 of individual operational mobile companies in over 100 countries around the world raise awareness of the Global Goals campaign along with Project Everyone and Global Citizen, through texts and numerous other communication channels, including social media.

This unprecedented collaboration of the world’s largest digital and mobile companies supports the 17 ambitious goals that were adopted by 193 world leaders at the United Nations on September 25, and are aimed at ending poverty, fighting inequality and injustice, and tackling climate change for the next 15 years.

Zain operations across all its markets will send texts about the Global Goals with a link to the campaign’s homepage, together with the global hashtag of the campaign. Bulk text messages will be circulated to Zain customers in both Arabic and English, while a profile of the goals will be communicated via Zain’s social media channels and highlighting the operator’s own initiatives with respect to sustainability.

The Global Goals feed right into Zain Group’s own sustainability values and outlook given its own pledge in 2012 to reduce emissions from its operations by 2020, as well as its campaigns and engagements to protect and improve the quality of lives in communities in which it operates.

Commenting on Zain Group’s participation in the Global Goals campaign, CEO Scott Gegenheimer said, “We are very pleased to see issues such as poverty, inequality, and climate change being addressed at the very highest levels of government and corporations across the globe. Zain has long believed that these issues need to be tackled in order to sustain a viable future for everyone, and we have gone about making inroads in such pursuits in our areas of influence. We support wholeheartedly the ambitions communicated in the Global Goals, and are happy to lend our support to the dissemination of this positive message.”

On her part, Jennifer Suleiman, Head of Corporate Sustainability of Zain Group said, “Our region and our world are faced with many challenges, though Zain Group has always believed in confronting such problems and looking for solutions to them. We believe that if governments, companies, and individuals should place the Sustainability Development Goals at the core of their business activities and take responsibility of the circumstances around them, they can decide to move in a positive direction to the benefit of all.”

The Global Goals campaign – with Project Everyone, Global Citizen, action/2015, and UN agency partners - aims to reach seven billion people in seven days.

Project Everyone is the brainchild of English screenwriter, producer and film director Richard Curtis, with the ambition to tell everyone in the world about the Global Goals so they are best achieved. The project’s founding partners include Aviva, Getty Images, Pearson, SAWA Global Cinema Advertising Association, Standard Chartered, Unilever, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

All over the world, the project is being supported by hundreds of television, radio, poster and digital companies, mobile phone and broadband providers, NGOs from all sectors, businesses, sports clubs, film and television production companies, record labels, events, magazines and retailers, all of whom have agreed to carry the goals to their fans, customers and users to help them become known all over the world.

For the full list of the Global Goals please visit: http://www.globalgoals.org/