The Need for Wage-Rich Prices
In 1819, UK MPs were debating a new law to outlaw the employment of very young children as chimney sweeps. Several MPs (apparently after lobbying from the Guild of Master Chimney Sweepers) raised concerns that sweepers would turn to mechanisation. They argued that the law would “deprive many people of employment, and throw a number […]
A Responsible Investment From Ethiopia to the UK
Oxfam’s comprehensive briefing on companies seeking to do more to ensure a Living Wage. It breaks down why low wages are persisting and highlights how this can be changed –showcasing the best practices companies and NGOs have put in place and providing concrete recommendations for how companies could do better. It also rightly draws attention […]
Rana Plaza: A Catalyst For Progress On Living Wage
Following our recent paper looking at the steps being taken towards delivering a living wage across global supply chains, Aleix Gonzalez Busquets of C&A and Andy York of N Brown Group explain why they, along with several other garment brands, have agreed a set of living wage principles in the wake of the recent Accord […]
A Remarkable Story of Global Progress
A few years ago, I was struck by the fervour with which a student activist acquaintance of mine, Stefan Baskerville, talked about the Living Wage. Every holiday he Livingwagewould leave his life of student activism (and occasional study) in Oxford and head for the East End of London, where he worked for Citizens UK, a […]
How do we replicate what works in Inclusive Business?
Defining A Living Wage, Understanding The Local Context
To mark Human Rights Day, Oxfam published a paper outlining why a living wage is essential and positive steps that have been taken to achieve it. Here, Mike Kelly, Chairman of the Living Wage Advisory Council and of the Living Wage Foundation, looks at how the issue of a living wage is being discussed. Since […]
How To Deliver a Living Wage in Supply Chains?
The concept of a living wage is not something new, but with recent reports warning of the lag between wages and productivity and outlining the failures in trickle down economics, it is in the spotlight. On Human Rights Day, Rachel Wilshaw talks about what has been done and what more companies can do to ensure […]
Lifting the Game in Sustainable Reporting
With the start of a new year, it is usually a time for people to reflect on the year that has passed, draw lessons from it so that they can improve themselves in the coming year. For sustainability practitioners, and advocacy evangelisers like myself, it is also an opportunity for us to review the year […]
Enhancing Vital Goods and Services Provided by Nature
25 years ago you’d have been hard pressed to find anyone in a company who thought that nature had anything to do with their business. We thought that nature would pollinate, control crop pests and disease and would continue to provide plentiful water and rich soil – all free of charge. But with rapid industrialisation […]
The Connected Farmer Alliance
You can’t talk about reducing poverty in this world without talking about agriculture. Seventy-five percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, with the vast majority dependent on agriculture for all or part of their incomes. Growth in the agricultural sector, therefore, has been shown to be at least twice as effective at reducing […]
Transcending Boundaries for Global Food Security
In just 25 years, Olam International has gone from a single-country, single-commodity company to a fully integrated global agribusiness firm operating in 65 countries. This growth is a true reflection of the meanings of the word ‘olam’, which is alternatively translated from old Hebrew to mean ‘transcending boundaries’, ‘the world’ and ‘timeless’. These definitions also […]
How to Increase Investment In Micro-Enterprises
This month CARE submitted written evidence to the International Development Committee (IDC) of the House of Commons on our peer-to-peer lending network, Lendwithcare.org . The IDC is currently looking at jobs and livelihoods and is interested to understand more about the role that a relatively new way of funding micro-enterprises can play in generating growth […]
A Unique Way of Investing in Small Family Businesses
Interview with Composer Christopher Gunning, Lendwithcare Supporter It’s no secret that Christmas, traditionally associated with goodwill and generosity, has over the years become a festival of gluttony and excess. Waste, too, is slowly creeping up: this year an estimated £2.4billion will be spent on unwanted gifts in Britain alone. Charity gifts are on the rise […]
Joanna Lumley Highlights the Value of Lending
A charity supporter who recognised the power of animation, social media and digital story telling was so inspired by crowdfunding microloans site lendwithcare.org that he decided to fund a short film himself to help spread the word about the site. As an entrepreneur himself, Julian Bashford fell in love with the simplicity of the revolutionary […]
Giving The Gift Of Opportunity This Christmas
When crowdfunding is combined with microfinance, amazing things can happen. Jo Broughton of Lendwithcare, the peer-to-peer microfinancing platform devised by aid and development charity CARE International, says that in the fight against poverty this is a winning combination. Lendwithcare began in 2010, offering individuals in the UK the chance to club together to finance the […]
Global Health: 3 Good News Stories From 2014
When the calendar turned to 1 January, who could have imagined 2014 would be quite such a tumultuous year for global health. The outbreak of Ebola virus, which emerged in February this year, continues to rage across West Africa and has killed more than 6,000 people. No one yet knows when it will end, but […]
How Inclusive Business is Transforming Tourism
In 2012, 1 billion tourists travelled across borders, compared to 25 million in 1950. Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide, and it’s growing most quickly in emerging and developing countries. Currently, UNWTO calculates that tourism is responsible for 9% of global GDP, for over 1 in 11 jobs and for USD 1.3 […]
Forging A New Path For Mining
Last week, Anglo American Chief Executive Mark Cutifani travelled to New York to help launch the Kellogg Innovation Network’s Development Partner Framework – a fresh approach to how the mining industry secures, nurtures and progressively revitalizes its social license to operate. Protecting the sustainable future of the communities in which we operate has never been […]
A Collaborative Approach to Ending HIV/AIDS
Many families around the world live in communities with limited access to resources and where doctors are hard to come by. Among these families, many children are also infected with one of the world’s deadliest diseases – HIV/AIDS. While this may sound like improbable hardship, more than 240,000 children – mostly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa […]
Communicating Sustainable & Inclusive Growth
As 2014 comes to an end, companies are beginning to reflect on their achievements from the past year and are already planning for their 2015 corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. CSR reports have become the norm among Fortune Global 500 corporations to communicate about successes and challenges associated with reaching sustainable and inclusive growth goals. […]