Acumen Fund and AECF: Innovative Approaches to Financing Pro-Poor Business
An increasing number of businesses find that investing in pro-poor business approaches yields not only bottom line rewards, but also poverty alleviation. However, employing these inclusive business models to produce such results can be challenging when short-term time horizons exist for capital investments and barriers to financial access persist for small and medium-sized enterprises. During […]
Great Expectations from New Entity UN Women
Earlier this week, I attended the UK launch of UN Women. Its Executive Director and Under-Secretary-General Michelle Bachelet addressed a packed audience in London to make the case for gender equality and women’s empowerment. She spoke evocatively about her hopes for UN Women and the World Bank’s upcoming report that positions gender equality as ‘smart […]
Reflections on the journey of corporate responsibility
Besides the regular festivities, food and frolicking, December is a time for reflection. Commentators love to look back on The Year That Was – debating everything from the most gripping news stories to the highest grossing movies. But it’s not often that you get to hear someone like the head of the UN Global Compact, […]
A Fair Hearing for Fairtrade
Passions are running high among the defenders and detractors of Fairtrade. Sparked by a recent report by the right-wing economic think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a long-running debate has be reignited (see the article by Simon Bowers on this site). A couple of years ago, the same thing happened when another right-wing […]
DFID's MDG Conference: Scratching The Surface Of Business Engagement
Speaking at DFID’s MDG Conference this week, Helen Clark, head of the United Nations Development Programme and former Prime Minister of New Zealand, highlighted the importance of business in meeting the MDGs. However, she said we were still only “scratching the surface” of what is possible. She highlighted the need to promote inclusive business models […]
DFID’s MDG Conference: Scratching The Surface Of Business Engagement
Speaking at DFID’s MDG Conference this week, Helen Clark, head of the United Nations Development Programme and former Prime Minister of New Zealand, highlighted the importance of business in meeting the MDGs. However, she said we were still only “scratching the surface” of what is possible. She highlighted the need to promote inclusive business models […]
Inclusive Business: Moving from the why to the how – today's launch of the Business Innovation Facility
It is striking how far we have come. Only a few years ago, it seemed that many of us, represented in this network, were spending large amounts of our professional energy convincing donor agencies of business’ role in meeting international development challenges. Looking back now, three major trends stand out. First, there is a widespread, […]
Inclusive Business: Moving from the why to the how – today’s launch of the Business Innovation Facility
It is striking how far we have come. Only a few years ago, it seemed that many of us, represented in this network, were spending large amounts of our professional energy convincing donor agencies of business’ role in meeting international development challenges. Looking back now, three major trends stand out. First, there is a widespread, […]
Jeff Raikes, CEO, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: A Message to Members of Business Fights Poverty
We spend a lot of our time trying to convince skeptics that they should care about development. Bill Gates made the case very convincingly in his report to the G20 delivered last November. He argues from the supply side: successfully developing countries can keep the price of key commodities low by boosting production – important […]
Fighting climate change and poverty: business must be the driver of innovation
Today, Blog Action Day (www.blogactionday.org), is focused on the climate change crisis. This is a crisis that is integrally connected with the focus of this practitioner community – fighting poverty through business. As Nick Stern, who led the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, argued recently, “There are two big challenges for this […]
3 Reasons Why You’re Finding It Hard to Find And Keep Volunteers – And What To Do About It
The following blog entry is a cross-post from my blog Realizing Your Worth. Volunteer rates are down, but more people are talking about the importance of volunteering. There’s a disconnect. Here’s why, and what you can do about it. Outside there’s an audible hum, and it’s increasing in volume by the minute. People are talking […]