Sustainable Development

Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals

Meet the Longlist: Unilever Global Development Award, Supported by Business Fights Poverty

Business in the Community announce the longlist of companies selected for the The Unilever Global Development Award, supported by Business Fights Poverty. The award recognises businesses that demonstrate positive impact against one or more of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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From Gender Lens to Inclusive Impact Investment

By defining and disaggregating the ways investments empower women, beyond the very rudimentary criteria of solely investing in women, gender lens investing is helping to create frameworks and tools for the industry as a whole.
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Helping Refugees Move From Crisis To Resilience and Self-Reliance

Introducing our new Challenge on Business and Refugees with support from Pearson and in partnership with UNHCR, Mercy Corps, Business Call to Action, Innovest Advisory and Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Challenge aims to strengthen the foundation for effective partnerships to improve refugees’ wellbeing and educational and livelihood opportunities so refugees can thrive, not just survive.
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Mapping Lives with Refugees

How the Poverty Stoplight, a social innovation that activates the potential of people to assess and eliminate poverty in their families and communities through a self-evaluation tech tool, can help provide more stable and conducive environments for refugees.
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Charting a Course for Robust Private Sector Engagement

MCC share the highlights from their recent Advisory Council meeting in Washington, D.C. The gathering brought together Council members with deep subject area expertise, representing a variety of U.S. industries, to provide specific feedback on agency plans, as well as advice on how MCC can improve its engagement with the business community.
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Making Payment Acceptance a Driver for Financial Inclusion

Mastercard believe that merchant acceptance is key to financial inclusion. Here they discuss advancing payment acceptance at the base of the pyramid and how new product solutions, business models and partnerships can advance both electronic payments and financial inclusion.
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Sustainability Standards Embrace GIS Technology

ISEAL Alliance, who represent the global movement of sustainability standards, share insights on the exponential growth of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for sustainability and how this integrative technology is enabling standards to deliver a more tailored approach to compliance and capacity building, making certification more accessible to smallholders.
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Virtual Exchange: Students Collaborate to Tackle Social Enterprise Challenges in the Middle East

The M²GATE Virtual exchange program pairs students from Michigan & the Middle East to take on social enterprise challenges. Together they collaborate to identify a social problem in the region and come up with an entrepreneurial solution.
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Why Retailers are Uniting to Tackle Climate Change

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) explains how some of the UK’s leading retailers are coming together to strengthen the industry’s response to environmental challenges. Recognising that scale is essential to drive change, the BRC and has come together under the new initiative Better Retail, Better World, to build a better, more prosperous and sustainable world.
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Engaging the Private Sector for Development Results in Indonesia

Nilmini Rubin, Vice President for International Development at Tetra Tech in Jakarta, Indonesia, shares how MCC-funded projects are engaging the private sector in cocoa production and other industries to achieve better development results.
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Are Standards an Effective Tool to Help Improve Production Practices Across Sectors?

Kristin Komives, ISEAL’s Impacts Director, explores how sustainability standards drive the take up of sustainable practices, following the publication of a new research review.
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5 Ways Local Markets Help Refugees Rebuild Their Lives

In the westernmost corner of Uganda, something interesting is happening. This rural area of Uganda is challenging perceptions of how refugees can contribute to the local economy. West Nile in Uganda is home to hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese refugees, and together with their Ugandan host communities, they are beginning to drive growth.
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Affordability – Beyond the Buzzword

Affordability is at the core of much of CDC’s work as impact investors – from affordable electricity to housing, food, healthcare, education and many more. Yet ask someone to define what it means, and you may be met with little more than a blank stare.
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Women Working to Improve Sanitation and Hygiene

In the peri-urban areas of Maputo women are playing a key role in tackling the sanitation challenge. Poorly managed shared facilities have a major impact on women’s lives. As part of the WSUP programme in the city, women are playing a leading role in tackling the sanitation and hygiene challenge in their communities
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Women Sea Salt Producers in Indonesia Cooperate to Seize New Economic Opportunities

MCC’s investments in Indonesia are helping to empower women salt producers to increase the quantity and quality of salt production to boost incomes. The women are benefiting from labor-reducing and energy-efficient technologies as well as training programs aimed at improving salt-making skills, financial management, marketing and more.
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How Can Business Help Strengthen Provision of High Quality, Low Cost Education for the Poor?

What can be done to help improve the contribution of low-cost private schools to the education of children from low-income families? And what are the conditions needed for low cost private schools to equitably and sustainably deliver better outcomes for poor communities in ways that will further strengthen national education systems as a whole?
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Virtual Reality Training in Southern Africa

New technology fills a gap that many governments and training institutions in Africa are struggling to bridge: the need for more skilled workers. Virtual reality training can offer opportunities in a number of fields, giving people access to knowledge which can be used to improve their lives.
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A Nigérien Entrepreneur Finds Her Niche in Camel Milk

MCC’s $437 million five-year compact to strengthen agriculture sector entered into force in January. The compact will focus on improving access to water for agriculture and livestock and expanding access to markets. In this blog post, we profile Wouro Habsatou Aboubacar, who runs a camel farm outside of Niamey.
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The Counter-intuitive Nature of ‘recovery’ Lending

What happens when disaster strikes a community that is depending on microfinance for its credit requirements? VisionFund believe the greatest benefit is seen when aid and recovery lending working together. Aid supports people at their most vulnerable, whilst the recovery lending stimulates productive economic activity.
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A Collective Approach for Last Mile Distribution

The Global Distributors Collective (GDC), with over 100 last mile distributors and 30 supporting partners from across the distribution sector, have launched a Call to Action publication, which provides guidance and insight on the key challenges faced in last mile distribution and the opportunity to achieve impact through the GDC.
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What do we mean by "Sustainable Development"?

Join us in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals to combat poverty through innovative and scalable solutions that drive global progress.

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