How Can the Private Sector Tackle Inequality and Generate Shared Prosperity for All?
Listen to this article (audio generated using AI assistance): The high level and structural nature of inequality in our world is a systemic risk that poses an existential threat to our society and economy. It is eroding trust in our political and economic systems, constraining growth, contributing to polarization and unrest, and undermining our ability […]
Tackling Digital and Financial Exclusion: Women Vendors Raising Themselves Out of Poverty with Social Media Marketing
In 2020 Hand in Hand began an innovative project with Visa Inc., providing advanced business and digital training to 1,280 female microbusiness owners living in Nairobi’s informal settlements, described by the UN as “some of the most dense, unsanitary and insecure slums in the world.” But, just months after the project began, Kenya was hit […]
Social inequality has become an investor priority
When the European Union embraced the concept of double materiality in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, mandating that investors consider risks corporations externalize onto people, the business and human rights movement notched a significant win. Now the notion of double materiality is also taking shape in a different guise beyond Europe: in rising investor concerns […]
Facing The Poverty Tsunami: How Business Can Support the Lives, Livelihoods and Access to Learning of the Most Vulnerable People and Communities
The Poverty Tsunami: COVID, Conflict and Climate Change COVID, conflict and climate change are among a confluence of challenges driving a tsunami of poverty that is already crashing into the lives of vulnerable people and communities around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to contain its spread led to 97 million more people […]
To achieve the SDGs, business needs to grapple with its inequality footprint
COVID-19 is exacerbating the global inequality crisis – here is what business can do. Rising economic inequality, now exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is a major threat to the world’s economy and to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. SDG 10 (reducing inequality) has been one of the most neglected SDGs by companies to date. […]
Indigenous Perspectives on Poverty Eradication, Corporate Engagement and the SDGS
Indigenous Peoples play an essential role in land management, clean water and in maintaining the diversity of global food systems. Even though they make up less than 5% of the world’s population, Indigenous Peoples manage more than 28% of the globe’s land surface. They continue to use traditional methods that have evolved over centuries that […]
Going beyond the poverty line
Ensuring resilient livelihoods and sustained employment for vulnerable communities was already a stretch pre-Covid-19. For those communities lacking a stable income, the impact has been inconceivable. With border closures and travel restrictions, the downturn in trade has massively affected the income and employment of these vulnerable communities, especially the self-employed. Currently, more than 475 million […]
Business has a vital role to play in fighting poverty after the DFID-FCO merger
By some estimates, half a billion people globally will be pushed into poverty by COVID-19. For many in the international development community, therefore, the government’s decision to merge its Department or International Development (DFID) into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is ill-conceived and poorly timed. On 19 June, 188 NGOs called on the Prime […]
Covid-19: ‘We Won’t Get Back to Normal Because Normal was the Problem’
The crisis is set to generate a loss of at least 1.5% or $1 trillion worldwide, which would technically mean a global recession with all major regions affected and a devastating impact on the poorest countries. Plans for recovery are already being discussed, with a focus on the financial stimulus needed to help economies recover. But […]
