Economic Development

Economic Development Strategies to Combat Global Poverty

What is a value chain? And why you should care.

Farmer-centered agricultural value chains are a critical pathway to help vulnerable people provide nutritious food for their families and communities, while earning a Sustainable Living Income. Heifer Impact Capital is working to transform value chains that traditionally exclude farmers by deploying financing to optimize local value chains to keep income in the pockets of farmers.
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Living income and gender: adopting gender transformative approaches to improve livelihoods

Lily Petkova from ISEAL discusses the gender barriers that affect the income of female smallholder farmers and how we can apply a gender lens to transformative approaches when considering a living income.
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Spotlighting Fairtrade and Aldi UK’s ‘Dignity for All’ – a programme for female flower workers

This International Women’s Day, Fairtrade Foundation spotlight how their relationship with Aldi UK went from sourcing to becoming longstanding programme partners, and how it has supported women, including Meseret Teshome who didn’t have the opportunity to progress with her education when she was young.
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Jiselle and Cesar, On Gender Transformative Approaches

Cesar and Jiselle share some of their 30 plus years of experience working on women’s empowerment. Together they have recently been working on ‘gender transformative approaches.’ Cesar and Jiselle deep dive into what this means and the practicalities of implementing gender transformative approaches – for businesses everywhere, across value chains.
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Scaling Up Impact With Carbon Finance

Gyapa is one of the largest and longest running cookstove projects in the world. Ann Koontz, CEO at Relief International, shares her reflections and advice on how this carbon reduction project has progressed over 10+ years and how her partnership with ClimateCare has given vital access to carbon finance enabling her to scale the project’s impact.
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The chocolate entrepreneurs of Peru

Sustainability is justifiably the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day and the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published on 28/2/22, confirms what Fairtrade farmers have long been aware of: the climate crisis is here, it is real, and it is threatening. But by developing ‘value-add’ products, rather than solely raw commodities could offer a solution to people’s livelihoods.
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Inclusive future of work for women with disabilities

The inequalities experienced in the world of work for women with disabilities (WWDs) are significant and need to be addressed. Employability data for WWDs are hard to obtain locally, and where data is available the labour market participation rate of WWDs is lower than that of the general population.
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With their own businesses and as workers, Egypt’s women can be winners

The Rabeha programme, run jointly by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and UN Women, aims to significantly boost women’s economic empowerment in Egypt by mid-2024.
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The Kenyan woman changing young farmers’ futures

Victorine Owino transformed the savings and credit cooperative she manages into a thriving business hub in southwest Kenya, connecting local poultry farmers to training, financing and high quality supplies. Her journey from volunteer to manager is a testament to the transformative potential of women in leadership roles. And she’s now opening doors for others’ success.
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Empowering underserved women around the globe

Inclusive Businesses are uniquely equipped to improve gender equality. As commercially profitable, yet impact-driven companies, they follow the market and their social vision. Both paths lead towards women empowerment.
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Emily Pearce and Kubasu Agapeters

During the conversation we explore why anchoring climate change as a humanitarian disaster is essential; how our producers and farmers are climate mitigation and resilience pioneers; and what you can do next to better partner for impact.
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Robust social metrics for ESG investing: A practical way for boards to invest for impact

Almost two trillion dollars is being invested in ESG investment vehicles annually. And yet to date the instruments for investing and tracking the impact of the social dimensions are weak. The Citi-SOPHIA Oxford collaboration has uncovered a robust way to improve this.
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The time to accelerate the “S” in ESG is now

Parental leave is just one of many topics that workers in factories needs to learn more about. With 16 weeks stipulated by law it is quite generous from an international perspective, but with many factories lacking effective training tools, and many workers unable to read and write, this is sadly often missed.
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Justin Perrettson, Novozymes

Justin lays out simply, why businesses need to understand their social and environmental impact and take action on them, if they want a future. And how business leaders need to show up, not show off at international forums.
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‘Inequality kills’ but only 1% of companies show social responsibility

A new assessment shows that just 1% of the world’s most influential companies are demonstrating the fundamentals of responsible business conduct. Dan Neale outlines what needs to change for the private sector to address rather than add to growing inequality.
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Ayan Said, Voicing Voices

Ayan provides practical tools and tips to help us all, and particularly business decision makers to create the spaces for better communication.
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Systems Theory Through a Gender Lens

The potential to incorporate a systems approach into a fund structure represents new thinking on how to evaluate opportunities, support businesses, increase impact, measure impact, and shape entire markets to reduce the gender gap.
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How does gender equity drive resilience for women and for business?

Gender equity is a driver of resilience, both for women and also for the businesses that work with them across their value chains. In
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What can we learn from women leaders in the fights for climate justice

What can we learn from women leaders in the fight for climate justice? – full video

This session explored the central theme of International Women’s Day – the important role that women leaders are playing in driving a more sustainable
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How can we drive gender equity through responsible sourcing?

Hosted with UN Foundation Responsible Sourcing holds the promise to improve the lives of millions of women workers globally. Corporate leaders have offered researchers
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What do we mean by "Economic Development"?

Explore how economic growth can significantly reduce poverty through innovative business initiatives and strategic planning. Join us in making a difference.

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