Building the next generation of responsible businesses and leaders
Everyone has the right to decent work. Meaning, a job which delivers a fair income in a safe environment with prospects for the future and social integration. A job which offers social protections if you are sick, have family commitments or are injured. A place where you have the freedom to express your concerns, organise […]
How Can Businesses Support Economic Inclusion for People in Extreme Poverty?
Before COVID-19, over 700 million people worldwide were living in extreme poverty. The pandemic could push an additional 150 million people into extreme poverty by the end of 2021. People experiencing extreme poverty already have limited access to health care, food, clean water, and public services. They face obstacles in accessing markets, employment opportunities, and […]
Women entrepreneurs make changing norms the new norm
As we’ve noted before, success in the social sector is usually seen as “scaling out” — as described by Iman Bibars, regional director of Ashoka Arab World. This male-dominated “franchise model” often results in big budgets and large numbers of beneficiaries. But many women take a different, incredibly successful approach: “scaling deep.” “When women adopt a […]
A day in CottonConnect’s Women in Cotton programme: Practical training, tangible changes
International Women’s Day is always a day for celebration at CottonConnect, as we recognize the capable women leaders within our own and partner organizations, and renew our focus on improving the lives of women in cotton farming communities. This International Women’s Day, we want to give an insight into a day in our Women in […]
A fair trade: putting farmers first in the fight for climate justice
The 22 February marked the start of Fairtrade Fortnight, the annual celebration of all things Fairtrade. It’s a time when individuals, companies and groups across the UK come together to share the stories of the people behind our food and products, and explore how trade justice can be part of the solution to the many […]
A new dawn for women smallholders in India
The work of a female farmer begins well before dawn, and continues well after dusk, and yet in terms of empowerment, agency, and ownership, many women farmers are still in the dark. In India, 85% of rural women are engaged in agriculture, yet only about 13% own land. Overcoming the gender gap with support and empowerment […]
Supporting Women-owned Businesses in the Time of COVID-19
When we think of lifting people out of poverty we generally think of traditional acts of charity: donating to organizations that provide food, water, clothing, shelter and medical supplies to the millions who are in critical need, often as a result of natural disasters or economic calamities. Unfortunately, COVID-19, a global pandemic with an economic […]
Putting Women in the Driver’s Seat
In many traditional farming communities, women handle most of the manual work in addition to having responsibilities for home and family management, as many of them have never driven a car. They are consigned to work in planting, weeding, and drying beds while also managing the feeding, education, and healthcare of their immediate and often […]
Embroidered with empowerment, from mother to mother
My ‘day job’ as an impact measurement consultant in the international development and humanitarian sectors is all about evaluating human consequences of other people’s decisions. But when it comes to starting my own initiative, I’m realising how difficult some of those decisions can be. Khushi Kantha (‘Happy Blanket’ in Bengali) aims to create opportunities for […]
Will you partner with us to help small businesses survive the pandemic, thrive in the aftermath, and build self-reliance?
In late November 2020, a mother, and low-income garment worker in Bangladesh, called the Maya helpline. Her nine-month-old baby had severe stomach pains and she didn’t know the cause or what to do. Amidst the pandemic, the Maya team gave expert medical advice via a free telephone consultation, judged the severity of the issue, and […]
CARE and Cargill’s cocoa collaboration: Transforming lives together
As two global organizations, Cargill and CARE understand the complexity of the interrelated challenges of community development, nutrition, improved livelihoods and women’s empowerment. But we also know the tremendous impact that can be unlocked when we work together toward shared goals: learning from one another, challenging each other’s assumptions about what’s possible, and finding new […]
Data and Tech Acceleration in COVID-19: The Human Rights Impact on Vulnerable Garment Workers
Workers in the global supply chain—the women and men who make the clothes we wear and produce the food we eat—may not be the first people who come to mind when we discuss workplace data protection. However, like corporate offices, factories are digitizing rapidly—a change accelerated further by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, supply chain workers […]
Two Unusual Low-Cost Chicken Feed Options for Some of the World’s Poorest Entrepreneurs
In rural parts of Odisha, India, backyard chickens scavenging on farms and eating kitchen waste are a familiar sight. Scrawny birds patrol gardens freely, snatching up worms and insects, but they often become prey to larger predators. And since they don’t live in a coop, free-range chickens succumb to diseases that could easily be prevented […]
A Love Story Turned Passion Project
With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, one can easily recognise it as a purely commercial endeavour that commodifies love. Healthy scepticism aside, there is increasing recognition of commerce as a touchpoint for driving social change. And why not, after all, found a business on such a simple universal principle as love? This is what Richard O’Connor […]
Faced with the COVID-19 Pandemic, Farmers in Ecuador Innovate a Whole New Food System
There was no way for small-scale farmers in Ecuador to anticipate the COVID-19 pandemic more than a year ago when they started diversifying the products they grew and mapping efficient paths to get them to hungry urban markets. But when the coronavirus hit the South American nation hard, these farmers found themselves well-prepared to keep […]
Primary health workforce learning in an era of COVID-19: is digital delivery here to stay?
Continuous professional development (CPD) is essential for clinicians and health managers responding to rapidly changing epidemiology: from the rise of NCDs to the onset of new diseases like COVID-19. The strengthening of primary health workforce capacity is a key pillar of health systems strengthening and Universal Health Coverage, and is particularly needed in resource-poor and […]
2020 Hindsight to 2021 Foresight: Driving the Inclusive Digitization of MSMEs
2020 was a year like no other. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted every facet of life, from lives to livelihoods to long-term prospects. Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs)–the lifeblood of local communities and economies—were hit extremely hard by the lockdowns, shifts in consumer behavior, evaporation of capital and financing and disruptions to supply chains and […]
Clearing the Air in Darfur
Feeding your family and keeping warm are basic human needs. But in North Darfur, indoor pollution created by smoke from the firewood and charcoal used on household stoves is a major cause of death for women and children. 90% of households rely on wood and charcoal for their fuel. It’s expensive to buy and produces […]
Impact enterprises collaborate with the public sector to provide sanitation services
Access to safely managed sanitation is considered a basic human right, yet 4.2 billion people, over half of the world’s population, are living without access to safe sanitation services. The devastating effects of the global sanitation crisis have deepened as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic – and at a time when the need for […]
I Am Purple: Youth-Focused Gender Empowerment
I Am Purple was a youth-focused gender empowerment programme, funded by DFID, now FCDO, that used digital platforms to change harmful social norms around gender equality among young men and women in Nigeria. This 5-year programme applied social norm theory to address 3 key areas: Women’s voice and leadership Women’s role in decision-making Violence against […]