Effective Support for Women Entrepreneurs Goes Beyond Skills Training
Effective Support for Women Entrepreneurs Goes Beyond Skills Training Bernadette Sambo is an entrepreneur, wife, and mother of three in Maputo province, Mozambique. The challenge of balancing these roles is only made more difficult by restrictive gender-based social and familial expectations. “It had been very difficult to work and negotiate with my husband,” she recalls. […]
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. […]
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 […]
Progress in closing the gender gap in mobile internet use has stalled
Progress in closing the gender gap in mobile internet use has stalled More than 3.2 billion people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) now access the internet on a mobile phone. Mobile is the primary way men and women access the internet in LMICs, accounting for 85% of broadband connections in 2021.[1] Despite the critical […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Driving Social Entrepreneurship and Nature Conservation in Mexico
The Copalita-Zimatán-Huatulco watershed in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico is home to one third of the country’s biodiversity and equally rich in culture. Zapotec indigenous communities have lived in the upper and middle parts of the watershed for centuries, since pre-Hispanic times. As in many rural areas, women in the Copalita watershed play a key […]
Bridging the Supply Chain Gender Gap through Digital Training
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the lives of approximately 190 million women workers in global supply chains. Employees needed to access critical information on health, financial resilience, and tools for building harmonious relationships and handling stress. Since on-site training was no longer an option, HERproject kickstarted HERessentials, a tablet-based learning app for workers and managers, in Pakistan, India, […]
Supporting a new generation of green and social entrepreneurs
Throughout our global network, we are seeing more and more young entrepreneurs build businesses that deliver profit with purpose. They are the new generation entrepreneurs working to solve some of the greatest environmental and social challenges of our time and will play a vital role in creating a more equitable and sustainable world for us […]
GBV and Domestic Violence in Ukraine and How Businesses Can Help
This in-depth article on Gender-Based violence in Ukraine was commissioned by Business Fights Poverty, with the support of Avon. Domestic and gender-based violence is a phenomenon of constant concern in the world. Fighting it is the focus of many international organizations, human rights defenders, and socially responsible businesses. Unfortunately, as a reasonably stable phenomenon (i.e. […]
Engendering Regeneration for Supply Chains that Last
In a decade marked by climate shocks, pandemia, and global interconnection, the call to #InvestInOurPlanet is top of mind for individuals and companies – not just for Earth Day but for the future of life and business as we know it. Food and beverage corporations sense the urgency to transition to more renewable sources for […]
Inclusive business models can help close the gender gap
Even a successful inclusive business model does not automatically eliminate long-held prejudice and bias against women. “Supporting women in agriculture is the right and smart thing to do” – this has been our motto at GROW Liberia for the last five years. But what does this mean in practice? How do you convince partners – many of whom […]
Race to the top: How we pushed supermarkets to take human rights seriously
“Five kilos of extra beans on each worker’s table,” says Joseraldo Medeiros, a union leader in Brazil’s fruit exporting region of Rio Grande do Norte. “If we hadn’t fought for this, workers would not have received [the equivalent of] five kilos of beans in their salary.” The five kilos of beans cost 40 reais, or around $8, […]
Women at the Center of Africa’s Post-Pandemic Recovery
Every year, Women’s History Month is a chance to celebrate women of the past who have shaped the Africa we have become – and to highlight African women who are making history today. History will look kindly on the women whose pioneering responses to the pandemic saved many lives. Women like Dr Tlamelo Setshwaelo, who […]
The Ukraine Crisis: Responding to Evolving Needs
It’s just over a month since Russia invaded Ukraine and nearly 3,000 civilians have been killed, with the figure feared to be much higher. Over 10 million and counting have been forcibly displaced within Ukraine and neighbouring countries. According to the Ukrainian Economy Minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, since 24 February, Ukraine has suffered nearly US$565 billion […]