Since 1994, CBI has partnered each year with the Netherlands-based Sustainability Challenge Foundation to teach the International Programme on the Management of Sustainability (IPMS). IPMS is a 7-day high-level seminar for senior officials from the public, private and non-profit sectors on strategies to meet the challenges of sustainability. Since most efforts to meet sustainability targets generate conflict, decision makers need practical, state-of-the-art consensus building techniques to help stakeholders reach agreement on ways that they can meet their economic, social and environmental objectives simultaneously.

Each year approximately 45 participants from 20 - 25 countries (many with responsibility for implementing Agenda 21 in their countries) are selected to participate in the Program. They are senior professionals and managers from government, business, international organizations and NGOs. The learning process is dynamic and interactive, with a mix of theory and practice in the form of lecture, complex role-playing exercises, cases, and discussion groups. Three day-long multi-party simulations, designed by CBI staff, are the centerpieces of the curriculum. Participants are sometimes asked to take on roles in the simulations that are quite different from those they play at home.

After the Program, the Foundation stays in touch with participants and facilitates contacts among them in three ways: 1) participants are contacted each year to nominate candidates for IPMS; 2) some participants return as Associate Faculty members; 3) The Foundation publishes a tri-annual Participant Directory with updated information about each participant.

If you are interested in receiving the Directory, please write to: ipms@scfoundation.org . Finally, the Foundation's homepage http://www.scfoundation.org serves as a point of reference and source of information worldwide. A separate page, SustaiNews, is dedicated entirely for messages from former participants.

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