The Connected Farmer Alliance
You can’t talk about reducing poverty in this world without talking about agriculture. Seventy-five percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, with the vast majority dependent on agriculture for all or part of their incomes. Growth in the agricultural sector, therefore, has been shown to be at least twice as effective at reducing […]
Transcending Boundaries for Global Food Security
In just 25 years, Olam International has gone from a single-country, single-commodity company to a fully integrated global agribusiness firm operating in 65 countries. This growth is a true reflection of the meanings of the word ‘olam’, which is alternatively translated from old Hebrew to mean ‘transcending boundaries’, ‘the world’ and ‘timeless’. These definitions also […]
How to Increase Investment In Micro-Enterprises
This month CARE submitted written evidence to the International Development Committee (IDC) of the House of Commons on our peer-to-peer lending network, Lendwithcare.org . The IDC is currently looking at jobs and livelihoods and is interested to understand more about the role that a relatively new way of funding micro-enterprises can play in generating growth […]
A Unique Way of Investing in Small Family Businesses
Interview with Composer Christopher Gunning, Lendwithcare Supporter It’s no secret that Christmas, traditionally associated with goodwill and generosity, has over the years become a festival of gluttony and excess. Waste, too, is slowly creeping up: this year an estimated £2.4billion will be spent on unwanted gifts in Britain alone. Charity gifts are on the rise […]
Joanna Lumley Highlights the Value of Lending
A charity supporter who recognised the power of animation, social media and digital story telling was so inspired by crowdfunding microloans site lendwithcare.org that he decided to fund a short film himself to help spread the word about the site. As an entrepreneur himself, Julian Bashford fell in love with the simplicity of the revolutionary […]
Giving The Gift Of Opportunity This Christmas
When crowdfunding is combined with microfinance, amazing things can happen. Jo Broughton of Lendwithcare, the peer-to-peer microfinancing platform devised by aid and development charity CARE International, says that in the fight against poverty this is a winning combination. Lendwithcare began in 2010, offering individuals in the UK the chance to club together to finance the […]
Fighting Climate Change With Indigenous Livelihoods
edia Manager, Ashoka Changemakers In Indonesia, where forests are being destroyed at the highest rates in the world, an untapped solution exists for balancing conservation with economic expansion. Indonesia is the world’s fastest deforester—a dubious distinction that once belonged to Brazil. A recent reportrevealed that more than 2 million acres of primary forest are cleared […]
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 […]
Giving Through Consumption
The weakest in Africa are predominantly rural and constitute approximately 70% of the population. They are often forced out of their habitat to give way to large scale investments only to return to their ancestral lands as cheap labour earning wages that are barely sufficient for their basic needs. They go hungry in presumed resource […]
Closing the Early-Stage Financing Gap for Entrepreneurs
Picture your favorite startup company operating in the developing world. It might be selling solar lanterns to off-grid communities, providing transportation services for agricultural commodities, or perhaps operating a chain of grocery stores. Regardless of its sector or location, like any startup it probably did not follow a direct path to scale and success. It […]
How will you Step Forward in 2015?
Friday 5 December marks International Volunteer Day and to coincide with this, VSO is launching a new global campaign inviting people to pledge to #StepForward and raise the profile of volunteering for development in 2015. This campaign builds on recent research conducted by VSO and the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) demonstrating that ‘human-capital’ is […]
Unlocking Equity For Early-Stage Entrepreneurs
Is it possible to invest equity in African early-stage companies in a sustainable manner? Has anyone ever invested equity and provided support to early-stage companies in West Africa in a sustainable manner for amounts as low as EUR 50,000? Why not and why is it so hard? Another way to see this question is to […]
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 […]
Girl Power in the Pipeline
Meet Laxmi: an ambitious young woman from India, netball player, confident leader and now, aspiring lawyer. Just three years ago, the introduction to Laxmi would have been a bit different. Coming from an underserved community in Delhi, her chances to go beyond basic public primary school were slim. So, what changed? She enrolled in Goal […]
Women's Economic Empowerment Key to Alleviating Poverty
Around the globe, women and girls make up 70 percent of the 1.5 billion people living on less than a dollar a day, and the key to addressing this issue begins with their economic empowerment. Business ownership is a powerful vehicle for women to build more assets, but, perhaps more importantly, investing in women yields […]
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 […]
Taking Risks to Break New Ground in Botswana
I was born with an entrepreneurial spirit. It all began when I started plaiting the hair of women in my community as a girl, including teachers at my school for a small fee. I would take the income home to help my family. I grew up in Botswana, in a small old town with my […]
Cambodia: Growing Momentum for Sanitation
By KC Koch, iDE WASH Communications Manager On a Sunday morning, rural villagers gather in the village meetinghouse. A respected member of the local commune committee calls for the group’s attention. She leads them in games and stimulates lively conversations about proper sanitation. People wave fans in the air decorated with colorful photographs and consult […]
Contribute to the Fight Against Ebola with Bitcoin
In times of global crisis, we often find that humanity demonstrates compassion, offering support in cash, time and expertise. Those on the frontlines fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa are our modern-day heroes, selflessly exposing themselves to potential danger in the throes of the fight. These heroes need financial support, and more importantly, they […]