Leading Shariah-compliant Bank underscores ethical business model with local community outreach
The Mosaic youth mentoring initiative seeks to inspire young people from deprived communities to realise their talents and potential. It has been active in the UK since 2007, and as a long-term supporter Gatehouse Bank joined His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales, together with a number of other high profile business leaders, at the recent “The Prince’s Seeing is Believing Report Back Seminar – Responsible Leadership in Action” event, held at St James Palace.
The seminar saw business leaders, including the CEO of Gatehouse Bank, Mr Richard Thomas, sharing important insights and experiences on activities undertaken in 2012 as part of the Business in the Community (BITC) “Seeing is Believing” programme. This included the Apax-Mosaic Enterprise Challenge competition, in which over 3,000 students in 80 schools across the UK, supported by business mentors such as those from Gatehouse Bank, competed in teams to develop, market and sell a new product as part of an online business contest. The winning team were introduced by Mr Thomas to an audience of 165 high profile delegates at the seminar, all of whom were inspired by the achievements of children from some of the most deprived inner areas of the UK.
As Mr Richard Thomas OBE, CEO of Gatehouse Bank, explains: “Responsible leadership is an integral part of how we operate, and as a Shariah compliant bank we are committed not just to delivering profits, but also to having a positive and longer term impact on the community in which we operate. Participating in the recent Report Back Seminar is about looking to the future and galvanising other business leaders to adapt a similar collaborative approach, and this is going to be essential as we seek to deliver lasting change by addressing some of the most challenging issues impacting on society today.”
For Gatehouse Bank, working with Mosaic offers business leaders and executives the opportunity to see first-hand the pressing social and environmental issues facing local communities. Most importantly, Mosaic also addresses the role that businesses can play in responding to these problems, which for Gatehouse Bank directly reflects the business ethos of a socially responsible Shariah banking model.
Mr Thomas concludes: “Positive aspirations are crucial for young people’s future success and it’s important that we help to inspire the leaders of tomorrow. This is about investing for the future and the work that Mosaic does is vital in terms of engendering an ethos of aspiration, and then matching that ethos with the right business support to help ensure that these young people can realise their full potential.”