Managing Boundaries in an Unbalanced World
The global food system is a strange and twisted thing. One in eight people go hungry while one in five is overweight. A farmer in Iowa can grow ten tonnes of grain on each hectare, while most farmers in Africa struggle to harvest a single tonne. The rich countries of the world are among the […]
The Next Step for Sustainable Supply Chains
Supply chains are complicated and none more so than those of a retailer like M&S with our thousands of food, home, clothing and beauty products. Beyond our product suppliers are many processors, traders, ingredient manufacturers, wholesalers and farmers who we need to support our sustainability ambitions. Certification has been the traditional approach to managing these […]
Divine Chocolate: Empowering Women Cocoa Farmers
An interview with Charlotte Borger, Communications Director, Divine Chocolate 1. How does Divine Chocolate work with women in your supply chains? (If you have any specific examples of women being empowered by project(s) you have run, or as a result of your efforts, please mention here). Divine Chocolate is a UK based Fairtrade chocolate company […]
Harnessing Value Chains: Hand in Hand’s Experience
We see more companies recognising that they can make a contribution to wider economic, environmental and social progress and starting to adapt the way they do business. That is great, and is essential. But it is not enough. We have also to unlock the potential of poorer people, particularly women, to seize these opportunities. Hand […]
Boosting the Livelihoods of Dairy Farmers
The final report looks at a five-year market development project in Malawi, funded by Accenture that finished in 2014. The project addressed the bottlenecks and opportunities in the dairy industry in Malawi, where inefficient smallholder production (which accounts for 80% of the domestic milk supply) is contributing to the fact that Malawi has the lowest […]
Ghana Cocoa Growers Trained for Secure Future
The third report in VSO’s Producing Progress series looks at VSO’s role in Mondelēz’s Cocoa Life Programme. The series hopes to help us and others continue to improve livelihoods and strengthen the private sector in developing countries. The Cocoa Life initiative aims to support the cocoa-growing communities in Ghana that supply the global chocolate company. […]
Centres of Excellence Boost for Future Jobs
The first report in VSO’s Producing Progress series focuses on a programme in Kenya that tackles inequality through improving the provision of skills for entrepreneurship for marginalised groups, youth and women in particular. The reports draw out lessons from a variety of programmes, including those that improve employment opportunities, strengthen markets for smallholder producers and […]
Scaling Financial Inclusion for Micro-Enterprises
As world leaders gather in Addis Ababa to consider how to finance and deliver the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a recent dialogue in London attended by businesses, donors and civil society, has identified seven key actions to increase financial inclusion for micro-enterprises. Increasing finance to small businesses is an important priority for the Financing […]
Is Pakistan Really Open for Business?
After my first trip to the country last week, I’d say a resounding yes. And I’d also say that in the long-term, it’s business that will lead Pakistan to prosperity. But that means investment – and, despite the country’s impressive progress in recent years, international investors in Pakistan are in short supply. The Economist recently […]
Ending Poverty Through Trade
How free trade can bring prosperity to people across the world. The playwright George Bernard Shaw once wrote that poverty is “the greatest of evils and the worst of crimes.” While Shaw penned those poignant words more than a century ago, the reality is that too many people still lead lives filled with hunger and […]
To Change the World We Must Change Ourselves
The Mediterranean sea has become a graveyard for Africa’s youth. Every day, we see images of what would appear to be a continent racked by conflict and poverty, and people risking – often losing – their lives in an attempt to flee . Yet Africa has 11 of the 20 fastest growing economies in the […]
How Good ESG Standards Boost Business Competitiveness
Madagascar Lychee Export (MLE) is a lychee export station based in the port of Toamasina, Madagascar. The company buys fruits from collectors and local producers, and then processes, packages, and exports the fruit to European markets. Prior to 2010, MLE was a small, family-run business operating in a changing industry with rising standards and demands. […]
Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods
SOIL provides affordable, ecologically sustainable household sanitation services to Haiti’s most impoverished urban neighbourhoods. Social impacts SOIL provided 2,220 people in Haiti with a safe place to use the toilet, reducing the incidence of waterborne diseases such as cholera. The compost created as a by-product supported ecological restoration and agricultural livelihoods, improving food security. The […]
Water for All through Partnerships with Business
This week WSUP and Business Fights Poverty are co-hosting an online discussion on the vital role that business has to play in increasing access to safe and clean water. The discussion will look specifically at the theme of multi-stakeholder ‘partnerships’ – what are the most promising partnership models designed to tackle shared water risks? What […]
Partnering for Access to Safe, Clean Water for All
In many countries both the availability and quality of water are in decline as populations – and associated demand from agriculture, energy generation, industry and households – grow. The Water Resources Group (WRG), of which SABMiller is a member, estimates that the shortfall between freshwater supply and global demand could reach 40% by 2030, an […]
Water and Prosperity
Water and prosperity go hand in hand for SABMiller and the communities in which we operate. Without water, we can’t, of course, brew beer or make our other drinks. It is simply essential for the success of our business. But without water, farmers can’t produce the raw materials we need. And water scarcity and stress […]
A Call for Activism Around the SDGs at WEF Africa
“The generations to come will never forgive us if we fail to take responsibility.” This was the message shared passionately by Graça Machel during an event entitled Survive, Thrive, Transform: Ensuring Citizen Engagement in the Sustainable Development Goals held on Friday 5 June alongside side the WEF Africa Forum in Cape Town. Co-convened by the […]
Climate Resilience in Action in Nepal
“I remember when I was younger the water in fish pond outside my house came up to my waist – now it is dried up” – Manbir Khadka Manbir is a smallholder farmer from Kwanga village in the Rolpa District of Nepal. He says that increasing community income is critical to combat climate change. Without […]
Designing Programs that Work in Diverse Settings
Rice farmers on the hot, dry plains of northern Ghana would seem to have little in common with dairy and maize farmers in Kenya’s verdant Rift Valley: they live in different environments, sell different crops, and draw on different resources. Is it possible to design a program that has a positive impact on both groups? […]
The Environmental Implications of the Sanitation Crisis
Four million tons of human waste per year are dumped into Kenya’s waterways from informal settlements that lack access to hygienic sanitation. This waste pollutes drinking water and spreads disease far beyond the communities generating the waste. Providing hygienic sanitation sustainably means more than setting up toilets: it requires collecting the waste efficiently and treating […]