A New Model for Gender Lens Partnerships
By Suzanne Biegel, Investment Director, SPRING, and Founder/Chief Catalyst, Women Effect On this 2016 International Women’s Day, it pays to reflect on the global partnership efforts achieved since 1975 – the International Women’s Year, when the United Nations (UN) officially started to commemorate the accomplishments towards women’s empowerment and gender equality. The theme set by […]
The “Missing Middle” in Women-led Investment
Women-led investment has slowly taken off in recent years in developed economies – initiatives such as 37 Angels in the U.S. and UAE-based WOMENA are prime examples. However, in the developing world – where the financing gap is the largest – women-led investment is still an anomaly. Africa has only a handful of women-led investment […]
Changing Trade, Changing Lives
“Change is in your pocket: be the change you wish to see in the world.” At the Fairtrade Foundation we’re about to launch our new 2016-20 strategy. Like all of you, we’ve been exploring how we adapt to the many seismic shifts and trends, which will affect the ability of Fairtrade businesses and supply chains […]
What is the Point of International Women’s Day?
I can’t remember when or how I started observing International Women’s Day (IWD) but every year I ask myself the same questions about this day. The questions are: What is the point of International Women’s Day? Why do we need days like -International Women’s Day Has it helped advance African women’s fight for equality Is […]
Helping Families Identify and Overcome Poverty
At Fundación Paraguaya, we work with businesses to improve the standard of living of their employees. Many other organisations focus on this, but our approach as to how and why we are doing it is quite different. Read on, meet the Poverty Stoplight for Business and learn how it can leverage on collective intervention and […]
Building More Resilient Health Systems
Last week, the Philippines became yet another country in a growing list to caution women to delay pregnancy[i] as the country braces itself against an outbreak of the Zika virus. The virus is already spreading rapidly across Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as parts of the US, causing the World Health Organization to […]
New Survey Launched on Inclusive Business Policy
How can governments more effectively support inclusive businesses? Give us your input. The G20 Global Platform on Inclusive Business (GPIB) invites you to participate in the GPIB Inclusive Business Survey. The survey is open to any company that is working with people living at the base of the pyramid (BOP) – companies implementing an “inclusive […]
Clarity Matters in Inclusive Business
Inclusive businesses are commercially viable core-business models that provide at scale innovative and systemic solutions to the relevant problems of the poor and low-income people. While inclusive business is becoming increasingly popular, there is still a lot of confusion about what it is, how it addresses the poor, and how it works. Inclusive business models […]
Building Smallholder Resliance to Drought in Ethiopia
“There will always be a solution as long as we have food, but if a person has nothing to eat, there is no solution for any problem.” Collective savings and access to loans have helped a group of women in Ethiopia cope longer with the ongoing drought, but now resources are running out. The El […]
Livelihood Agenda for Refugees and Host Communities
On 3rd and 4th February 2016, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the governments of the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany and Kuwait co-hosted an international conference on the Syrian regional crisis. In advance of this, CARE International, the UK Department for International Development, Business Fights Poverty and the Ethical Trading […]
What Happens When Competitors Collaborate?
In Malawi Christian Aid has found that a common purpose – realising the potential of the rice and pigeon pea sectors – has brought competitors together with interesting results. You may wonder why competing smallholder co-operatives, buyers, traders, processors and exporters would join forces? Well, ultimately they believed it’s better to be competitors in a […]
Unlocking Solutions with Inclusive Business Innovations
Over 300 representatives of companies, social enterprises, and governments Asia-wide will gather next week at ADB for the 2nd Inclusive Business Forum for Asia. The forum, organized by ADB and 8 development partners, is one of the year’s most significant regional events on inclusive business in Asia. ADB defines inclusive business as a private sector […]
A Global View of Financial Linkages
iDE: Reaching 20 Million More People
Since 1983 iDE has leveraged the power of business to help rural entrepreneurs work their way out of poverty. From our first social enterprise in Somalia to our more recent businesses from Vietnam to Latin America, we have helped more than 23 million people gain access to a technology or service. We strive for tangible, […]
Building Effective Partnerships for Development
Corporation Tax in the Modern World
Dr Aidan McQuade, Director, Anti-Slavery International In the wake of the recent controversies that have been sparked since the announcement of Google’s US $ 130 million settlement with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, it is worth contemplating, of all things, a few interrelated issues of political and moral philosophy; I find they can often help […]
Introducing a New Database on Inclusive Business
If you search Google for ‘inclusive business’ you get 46.5 million results in under a second. But it would take you years to get through them. And if I search for inclusive business solar, or inclusive business models, or inclusive business Malawi, you find some good stuff and some not. So what would you do […]
Breaking the Chains of Dependency for Girls and Women
Throughout history, girls and women have often been invisible outside the home. Even now, in 2016, there are countries where women are prevented from getting a job, from owning their own land and even from setting up a bank account. This strips them of their independence. For every aspect of their lives, these women are […]
The Ripple Effect of Vision Care on the SDGs
When the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) were formally adopted last year, many in the sustainability community saw this as a moment of triumph. The seventeen goals are not only ambitious but also universal, and the private sector worked hand in hand with government and academics in their development. Yet sceptics have wondered whether the […]
Tackling Global Challenges
A special form of leadership, system leadership, is needed to tackle global challenges like food security, climate change, job creation, and gender parity. These challenges are complex and systemic, rooted in the actions and interactions of diverse yet interconnected, interdependent stakeholders. Leaders in business, government, and civil society increasingly recognize that they cannot be addressed […]