Promoting inclusive business

The Kanchi's Ability Awards, launched in 2004, is a high profile business awards programme, recognising best practice for the inclusion of people with disabilities as employees, customers and members of the community. The Awards targets top 1,000 companies, public organisations and the SME sector.

Through its Ability Awards, Kanchi aims to promote the disability business case and create a global business movement by engaging critical influence to drive positive societal change and economic empowerment for the one billion people living with a disability. Kanchi’s Ability Awards is a high profile business awards programme underpinned by: the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities a rigorous verification process a national media campaign The programme culminates in a televised awards ceremony, recognising best practice in companies and organisations for the inclusion of people with disabilities as employees, customers and members of the community.

Solution, Innovation and Impact

The Ability Awards targets top 1,000 companies, public organisations and the SME sector to identify 50 Ability Award Winners, six Category Winners and three Overall Ability Award Winners. Since its inception in 2004, the Ability Awards has created an Irish Ability Business Community of 150 companies representing 20% of the working population in Ireland. The Ability Awards Spain was hosted by the Queen of Spain and had exposure to an audience of 67 million people. 67% of companies involved in the Ability Awards had evidence to prove they had changed their policies, procedures and approach to recruiting and serving people with disabilities.

Funding, Outlook and Transferability

Following the success of the Ability Awards in Ireland and Spain, Telefónica has committed to expand the Ability Awards programme globally into four additional territories by 2015 (the UK, Germany, Brazil and Argentina) and a population of over 500 million people. The success of the Ability Awards to date has generated significant international interest for Kanchi and requests from businesses and organisations to expand the awards into their countries. As a result, Kanchi is committed to expanding the Ability Awards into a total of 10 countries over the next five years: UK, Germany, Brazil, USA, Austria, Netherlands, Sweden, Singapore, India and Australia.