Corporate-NGO Inclusive Business Partnerships
At our Inclusion Inc. conference at The Fletcher School, there was a fascinating conversation between Tim Cross, President of YouthBuild International, and two of YouthBuild’s corporate partners, Lata Reddy, President of The Prudential Foundation and Dina Silver Pokedoff, Senior Manager of Branding for the Saint-Gobain Corporation. What I particularly enjoyed about the discussion was that […]
Business Action on the Post-2015 Development Agenda
2015 is set to be a landmark year for sustainable development. By the end of 2015, we should have in place a new set of global development priorities: the Sustainable Development Goals, a new framework for financing and delivering them, and a legally binding climate change agreement. A key difference today compared to 2000, when […]
Donors’ New Role in the Fight Against Poverty
A remarkable thing happened over the past two decades: the world grew richer, freer, and more secure than ever before. The end of the Cold War in 1991 was a seminal event not least because it ushered in these trends. Democratic governance has flourished in many countries where a mere 20 years earlier repression and […]
Recognizing the Power of Cross-Sector Collaboration
The role of business in society is changing. Philanthropy is no longer the primary way that businesses make the world a better place. Increasingly, through public-private partnerships (P3s), businesses, nonprofits, and governments are working together to address entrenched issues, like poverty and climate change. By pooling funding, assets, and expertise, partnerships are capable of generating […]
Water Stewardship: Good for Business and Development
The United Nations is finalizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of international goals addressing a wide range of global challenges, including energy, agriculture, governance, and poverty reduction. The SDGs will be implemented when the Millennium Development Goals, the UN’s last set of development targets, expire at the end of 2015 and water-related issues […]
Recognizing the Power of Cross-Sector Collaboration
The world of development has changed dramatically in the last several decades. While investment and resources in developing countries used to be defined largely by public resource flows, today the official government contribution is dwarfed by private sector inflows. The growing influence of the private sector in the economic development process underscores the importance of […]
How USAID Partners with Business for Development Impact
USAID works with a diverse array of partners. Among these partners, the private sector—global and local businesses, financial institutions, investors, and entrepreneurs—has a unique and growing role to play in global problem solving. USAID partners with the private sector where there is strong alignment between development objectives and business interests. Today, there is increasing overlap […]
Putting Enterprise at the Heart of the Post-2015 Agenda
The international community is busy defining a new set of “Sustainable Development Goals” that will shape the agenda when the current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expire later this year. One striking improvement is the emphasis being placed on inclusive growth, jobs and enterprise. And in that context it is encouraging to see the draft SDGs […]
10 Steps to Perfect Partnerships
I was recently set an interesting challenge, as part of a conversation on good collaboration: in under four hundred words to come up with 10 clear steps that organisations could follow to create the ‘perfect partnership’. Let’s get one thing clear. The Partnering Initiative has worked with hundreds of organisations and partnerships for over a […]
A Milestone Year for Development
2015 is a milestone year in which the international community will set the development agenda for the next 15 years, most notably through the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when they expire this year. We’ve had a long interest in the role business can play in […]
Radical Collaboration – 10 years later
How a Multi-stakeholder Meeting Lead to the Creation and Success of the Diamond Development Initiative As we look forward to a dynamic and successful 2015, we are also looking back – ten years back, to the original conception of the Diamond Development Initiative . Rich Man, Poor Man The idea of DDI took shape in […]
Passion Fruit and a New Approach to Agriculture
Partnering to Scale Impact of Sustainable Entrepreneurs
A woman using a solar energy charger, supplied by Kumudzi Kuwale, 2014 SEED Africa Award Winner By Helen Marquard, Executive Director SEED & Anais Mangin, Project Manager SEED Are locally-driven social and environmental enterprises too small to have an impact? We at SEED don’t think so, and Organic Africa demonstrates that. In 2007, when everyone […]
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 […]
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 […]
How to Integrate Social Entrepreneurs within Corporate Value Chains
Increasingly, corporations want to work with social entrepreneurs to secure their supply chain, demonstrate their commitment to inclusive business, and strengthen trust and brand in the communities in which they operate. Social entrepreneurs are seeking to partner with corporations seeing them as first customers paving the path to scale, ever elusive in the world of […]
Towards a 4th Sector in Global Development
A podcast with Gib Bulloch and Louise James about the new report from Accenture Development Partnerships, The Convergence Continuum: Towards a 4th Sector in Global Development. The digital revolution and innovative financing are reshaping the convergent forces that define international development. The international development landscape is evolving. From the individual sectors—public sector, private sector and […]
Innovative Partnerships to Empower Girls
Across the developing world, adolescent girls face the triple disadvantage of living in rural areas where education isn’t a priority; having limited power and access to resources; and being undervalued by their communities simply because they’re girls. While there is recognition that investing in girls is key to fighting poverty, not many know just how […]
Sport as Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls
Head, Education and Girls Programmes, Standard Chartered No single entity can address an international development challenge in isolation. Effective interventions require a suite of resources, networks, expertise, and experience, and no one institution has the human and financial capital required. The challenges girls and women face are no exception. Any sustainable, truly impactful effort to […]