Background

IFC’s Environmental and Social Performance Standards (PS) define IFC clients’ responsibilities for managing their environmental and social (E&S) risks. Although the PS have been around for 15+ years and there are a lot of materials, e-learning, and webinars, there isn’t an IFC stamped curriculum or a learning journey to guide external constituents & partners (EPFIs, DFIs, IFC clients and external consultants, broader financial community).

Objectives

Increase

capacity of IFC partners and clients to meet performance standards.

Establish

a standardized training curriculum on reducing environmental and social risks for IFC infrastructure projects worldwide.

Position

IFC as a supportive investment partner.

Approach

Defining the current state

We worked with the ESG team and performed a stock taking exercise of all existing learning materials and resources currently available that could be used for training a broad range of external constituents & partners on IFC’s Performance Standards. This also included understanding the needs and identifying the gaps of the institutions who use IFC’s Performance Standards, as well as IFC’s own internal training needs. We created PS specific learning objectives that were reviewed and approved by PS subject matter experts.

Content mapping

We built on previous work of the E&S team and cataloged and mapped all existing resources to specific PS learning outcomes and objectives. We helped visually display areas where resources were abundant and where information was missing and new materials were needed.

Ideation of the future state

After carefully analyzing the current state, setting the learning objectives and mapping the existing content, we proposed a structure for a learning program based on IFC needs and aligned with the OLC learning platform.

Outcome

The project’s deliverables will serve as a blueprint for the development of a certification program, as well as the build of different courses and their implementation in the upcoming years. The IFC Team will also use the ideas provided to build an ecosystem of resources and initiatives around the Performance Standards which will help IFC strengthen its brand as a thought leader in the field.

Improving IFC clients’ capacity to manage environmental and social risks

How could we establish an externally facing program that helps enhance the quality of E&S risk management while building the IFC brand as a thought leader in E&S competencies?