Empowering action towards improved livelihoods
We often talk about system-level change to address root causes of poverty and the imbalance of risk. This requires us to unite in different and creative ways. The Living Income Community of Practice motivates actors across sectors to help close the income gap, so that smallholders can earn a decent standard of living as a […]
How can business-led innovation support refugees?
We know that the humanitarian landscape is changing – crises have become more protracted and complex, as well as characterised by greater barriers to humanitarian assistance. The COVID-19 crisis and associated economic turbulence is also accelerating need. In this context, business has a role to play in developing a more sustainable response to global displacement and in […]
VIDEO: How can companies better integrate their social and environmental agendas
Dr Sally Uren is the Chief Executive at Forum for the Future, a leading international sustainability non-profit, working with business, governments and civil society to accelerate the shift toward a sustainable future. In this session, Dr Sally explained how businesses can better integrate and embed social and climate innovation across their operations. Also, she listed […]
Rudderless COVID recovery: We need a real road map from somebody
As the days get longer in the Northern Hemisphere, hope for global control of COVID-19 seems both nearer and more elusive. The U.S. and UK have vaccinated more than half of their populations and begun to re-open their economies. The rest of Europe is catching up. The East Asian economic powers are also doing well, though there has been worrisome news from Osaka, Japan’s second […]
A New Report Shows How COVID-19 Has Challenged Farmers and Entrepreneurs. Here’s How the Private Sector Can Help.
When COVID-19 began to sweep across the world a year ago, it became clear that farmers, agribusinesses, and entrepreneurs in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia would face disruptions to their livelihoods. But to effectively respond to the crisis, it was important to know exactly how they were being impacted: which challenges were affecting them […]
Examples from the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark COVID-19 study: How some companies are responding to the crisis in a meaningful way
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit businesses hard, wiping out the equivalent of 255 million jobs in 2020 alone – four times more than the 2009 financial crisis. Unskilled labourers, minorities and women have been particularly hard hit. In February 2021 the World Benchmarking Alliance released a COVID-19 and human rights study of the same 229 […]
Business and COVID-19 One Year On
COVID-19 has impacted us all, but the most severe impacts are being felt by the most vulnerable people. On March 12 2020, Business Fights Poverty launched a programme to accelerate global learning and local action to support the most vulnerable people and enterprises in companies’ value chains, communities and beyond. We started by developing a Response Framework with […]
Business Fights Poverty Fortnightly Round-Up
This month marked the anniversary of the WHO declaring the COVID-19 pandemic. This milestone presents an opportune moment to reflect on the devastating loss of life and opportunity that has been suffered – particularly by the world’s most vulnerable people. Alongside this, the anniversary has been a time for us to remember the countless acts […]
Innovation in the Face of Crisis: How to Support Entrepreneurs during the Continuing COVID-19 Pandemic
When the COVID-19 pandemic reached El Salvador, it delivered a blow to Fátima Meléndez, owner of Lafá Cake Boutique in San Salvador. Most of the company’s business came from providing cakes and dessert tables at weddings, which were cancelled indefinitely when El Salvador entered a strict, months-long lockdown. Lafá saw its sales plummet and even […]
Why living wages will help flower workers to ‘bloom back better’ after Covid-19
The flower and plant sector is an incredibly important source of hundreds of thousands of jobs in low-income countries, and is particularly vital for women who make up around half of the workforce. Globally, the export of cut flowers was worth over £6.75bn in 2018. However, with prices paid to flower farms for their products […]
Business Partnerships as a Force for Good
Business Partnerships for Global Goals (BP4GG) is a UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office programme which invests in partnerships with businesses to test and scale shared value initiatives that support achieving the SDGs. Managed by Mott MacDonald, the programme hosts the Vulnerable Supply Chains Facility, a rapid COVID-19 response facility partnering with 20 international agricultural […]
Business Fights Poverty Fortnightly Round-up
Last week, our Rebuild Better Virtual Summit on Gender brought together experts and practitioners from across sectors and continents to ask what business can do to support women, particularly in view of the disastrous impacts of COVID-19 on gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. Between 9-11 March, we explored three subject areas that […]
Companies Can’t Ignore the ‘She-cession’ Created by the COVID-19 Pandemic
“Stronger engagement on gender equality is key to a sustainable global recovery from the COVID-19 crisis and building fairer, more inclusive, more prosperous societies. Women and girls are in the frontline of the pandemic and must be put in the driving seat of the recovery.” In this statement, Jutta Urpilainen, EU Commissioner for International Partnerships, stresses […]
Seminar video: What can business do to help tackle Gender-based violence?
PROFILE Claudia Eger is Assistant Professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. Her research explores the challenges and complexities of business in society with a focus on how social norms and values shape labour market inequality. In her recent work, Claudia studies the intersection of gender and violence in […]
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 […]
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 […]
COVID-19: Long-term support for biotech yields vaccine promise in Cuba
Cuba hopes to inoculate its entire population against COVID-19 with a home-grown vaccine this year. The country has four potential vaccines in development, the most advanced of which – Soberana II – is due to start Phase III trials in March with 150,000 volunteers. If it clears this final clinical hurdle, the Cuban vaccine will […]
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 […]
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 […]