If We Want to Meet the SDGs, We Need to Ditch Empty Rhetoric and Invest in Young People
‘Youth is the future. The leaders of tomorrow. Youth will change the world’. This is all true. But the rhetoric banded around at leadership events is not being matched by actions that enable youth’s full and meaningful participation. Last month’s International Youth Day (12 August) serves as a powerful reminder that this needs to change. […]
New Report: Women Champion Forest Conservation in Bale, Ethiopia
A new report outlines how Farm Africa and SOS Sahel Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains Eco-region REDD+ forest conservation programme in Oromia, Ethiopia has achieved impressive results in reducing deforestation, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and increasing household incomes and gender equality. Since 2012, Farm Africa has been working in partnership with the NGO SOS Sahel Ethiopia, with […]
Real-time information for famers enables climate change adaption
How does Lentera use data to enable farmers to adapt to climate change? We use satellite and weather data to provide farmers with crop specific advice with regards to fertilizers, pests and diseases, and water management of their farms. This helps farmers adapt their agronomy practices in line with changing climate patterns. We also use […]
Steps for improving incomes in banana supply chains
Banana producers face an ever-tightening financial squeeze, caused by soaring export costs, plummeting import prices, climate change, Covid-19, supermarket price wars and the fusarium TR4 fungus. Add to this rising food prices and shortages of farming inputs like fertiliser, and you have a perfect storm. These challenges threaten the prospects of smallholder banana farmers and […]
How can young people from low-income countries get the best from financial services?
How can young people from low-income countries get the best from financial services? With goals that range from “[being] financially stable”, to “being an established business tycoon”, young people from low-income communities have big ambitions. However, due to an interwoven mix of financial barriers, they currently lack the information, infrastructure, and knowledge to pursue such […]
Boosting Learning Gains for Children Living in Underserved Communities
Boosting Learning Gains for Children Living in Underserved Communities A Nobel Prize-winning economist has confirmed among the largest learning gains ever measured by a major study in international education. The groundbreaking study, led by Professor Michael Kremer, the 2019 Nobel Prize-winning economist, suggests that children living in underserved communities receive 53% more learning in NewGlobe-supported schools […]
Advancing Gender Equality through Inclusive Distribution Networks
Advancing Gender Equality through Inclusive Distribution Networks Women play a vital role in fast-moving consumer goods, or FMCG, value chains. Much of the focus on accelerating gender equality in this space, however, has been limited to supporting women suppliers. Women can also play key roles in FMCG value chains, both as distributors and as retailers. […]
Social inequality has become an investor priority
When the European Union embraced the concept of double materiality in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, mandating that investors consider risks corporations externalize onto people, the business and human rights movement notched a significant win. Now the notion of double materiality is also taking shape in a different guise beyond Europe: in rising investor concerns […]
The sobering reality of the UN’s Global Goals
The sobering reality of the UN’s Global Goals Remember the Sustainable Development Goals? It’s not a facetious question. Amid all the other corporate sustainability priorities of the past few years — net zero, ESG, the circular economy, social justice, resource constraints and all the rest — not to mention a seemingly never-ending drumbeat of political upheaval, […]
Turbo-charging D2C sales for an impact sanitation product
Our client: SATO by LIXIL, creating sustainable, affordable hygiene solutions LIXIL designed its SATO product range to improve sanitation and hygiene access for communities without access to sewer systems, via affordable and easy-to-install systems. SATO has impacted over 25 million lives to date, shipping over 5.1 million units across 38 countries. The blue SATO pan, […]
Six ways social entrepreneurs can step up to help refugees
Half of refugees in the UK struggle to get employed. What can those of us working in the social impact space do to help them find meaningful work? In the recent WISE Ways to Lead webinar, hosted in partnership with NatWest, we heard from social enterprises working with refugees to answer just that. Read on […]
Supporting refugees through financial inclusion
On Monday, World Refugee Day marked the start of Refugee Week (20-26th June) – a UK-wide festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. That sense of creativity and resilience has been embodied by thousands of people living in Zambia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, who have benefitted from a joint […]
NaTakallam – where language learning meets social impact for refugees
Today, there are over 100 million forcibly displaced people in the world. They face not only the loss of assets and livelihood but also of their agency. Mobilizing displaced individuals to regain their agency and earn an income is at the heart of NaTakallam’s mission. However, xenophobia is becoming more widespread – given a microphone […]
Join the Futuremakers Forum 2022
How can we, together, put young people into the driving seat and create the financial systems they need to achieve success? Nearly 1 in 4 young female entrepreneurs say they don’t control their own money; 75% of young people with business bank accounts say they assumed they weren’t eligible for any further financial products and […]
Combating rural poverty through Inclusive Business
Maize is the staple crop for 1.6 million smallholder farmers in Zambia. It is their main food, their source of cash – and their nemesis. Growing maize in monoculture, lacking access to inputs, and relying on traders to reach markets, most smallholder farmers stay desperately poor. According to the World Bank, more than three out […]
Tackling inequality – an integral component to long-term business success
Sustainability has become mainstream. Today more than ever, business is expected to take action to tackle the climate emergency, bring greater sustainability into value chains and be held accountable for these efforts. Capital markets, consumers, and governments are all in agreement that sustainability is the only long-term success for business – as well as for […]
NEW REPORT – The Case for Living Wages
Work is often lauded as the most important route out of poverty. There is little doubt that work can and even should provide a way out, but for hundreds of millions of people, this is simply not the case. In the lower-income countries that make the biggest contributions to global supply chains, large numbers of […]
Why decolonizing philanthropy is important now more than ever and how to achieve it
In the nonprofit world, organizations often talk about bringing community members in to have a seat at the table. This is especially true as organizations now work to meaningfully respond to persisting inequity in the nonprofit space. However, at The InteRoots Initiative – a United States-based philanthropic organization that works both domestically and globally – […]
Prioritising engaging with workers and other stakeholders for human rights
Ensuring corporate respect for human rights is fundamentally about people, revolving around how companies become aware of, prevent, mitigate and remediate actual and potential negative impacts on the rights of individuals and communities. Respecting the rights of these people can only be done effective by seeking to understand their experiences and perspectives. In other words, […]
Facing The Poverty Tsunami: How Business Can Support the Lives, Livelihoods and Access to Learning of the Most Vulnerable People and Communities
The Poverty Tsunami: COVID, Conflict and Climate Change COVID, conflict and climate change are among a confluence of challenges driving a tsunami of poverty that is already crashing into the lives of vulnerable people and communities around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to contain its spread led to 97 million more people […]