The big news this week is that tomorrow, 15 October, we will go live with the first of our Business Fights Poverty Virtual Summits . Following on from NYC Online 2020 last month, we are hosting a series of free one-day online events to deep-dive into six specific action areas.
Tomorrow’s Virtual Summit focuses on the vitally important subject of Health. We are thrilled to be joined by a diverse panel of experts to discuss how business can help ensure health access for all. You canregister here for the day, which will include:
- A fireside chat between Myriam Sidibé, Founder, Brands of a Mission , and Chair and Co-Founder, National Business Compact on Coronavirus (NBCC), Kenya, and Alan Jope, CEO, Unileve r.
- A webinar on ‘How can we ensure hand hygiene for all? ’, hosted with Brands on a Mission
- Breakout discussion s providing opportunity for peer discussion and networking.
- A live video workshop and accompanying online discussion on ‘How can self-care help health systems rebuild better during COVID-19?’ hosted with Bayer .
Live participation is free for all our Virtual Summits. In addition, you can access recordings and written summaries of the event with our digital passes . These can be purchased for single events, or alternatively our Annual Digital Pass enables discounted access to the recordings for both our flagship five-day Online Conferences and all six Virtual Summits. In purchasing a digital pass, you are helping us ensure that those who can’t afford it, get free live access to our online events.
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In keeping with this month’s focus on health, we’ve published several articles on the role of business in building healthy societies:
- Learn how a Pakistani start-up has repurposed its operations, from manufacturing flat-pack modular housing to providing infrastructure to support the healthcare system through the COVID-19 crisis.
- Find out about the Healthy Business Coalition’s Eight-Point Action Plan to help businesses invest in health, reducing disparities in health care and their associated costs.
Improving global health relies on bettering access to affordable, good nutrition. Sadly, around 26% of the global population suffer from food insecurity and lack regular access to healthy food.
- Food Fortification – An Enriching Opportunity reports on four key themes on how multi sectoral partnerships can drive large-scale food fortification.
- Aligning Business Reporting on Nutrition sets out “the challenges and opportunities of the current business accountability landscape for nutrition”, and calls on businesses to align their reporting on nutrition using existing indicators.
- Accessibility and affordability of healthy foods for all provides insight into the World Benchmarking Alliance’s methodology framework, which assesses “the key dimensions where businesses can step up and contribute towards a resilient food system transformation”.
Our other articles highlight how paying attention to inclusivity and equity in global value chains presents a significant opportunity to rebuild better:
- Disruptive, digital, and local: the new reality for Latin American MSMEs sets out how the creative gap, the digital gap and the market access gap are stifling the recovery of Latin American MSMEs.
- Why businesses must act now to tackle hidden labour in global supply chains highlights the devastating impact of hidden labour on gender equality, and argues that recognising, assessing and addressing hidden labour is not only good for women, but good for business too.
- Global Supply Chains & Covid-19 Pandemic Impact on Child Labor provides 6 practical actions that that global brands can take to combat child labor in their supply chains. To do so, companies must start with the last mile, getting to know the individual households whose members underpin their business success.
- Entrepreneur Susie Martin moved to Laos and set out to establish a buffalo dairy industry that benefited the local community. Find out about how she’s realising the ambition in Building a commercial buffalo dairy in Laos: five minutes with entrepreneur Susie Martin
We’ve also been privileged to hear from two inspiring and knowledgeable leaders in their field, who shared reflections on their work in our Spotlight Podcast.
- Vic Van Vuuren , Director of the Enterprises Department at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, discusses the effects of the global pandemic on smaller enterprises in emerging markets and how global businesses can support them – from driving a green recovery to innovation in business models. In addition, he expands on his mission to ensure all workers are respected as individuals; and how businesses success is not simply about financial profits.
- Samie Al-Achrafi , CEO, Marmalade Fish, is author of #Time4Humanity, a thought-provoking book that lays out the roadmap on how to bring greater consciousness to leadership. In this interview, Sami challenges us to explore new business paradigms, and offers practical questions that guide better leadership and business impact.
We are grateful to all the contributors of the last fortnight for sharing their experience and knowledge with our wider community. If you would like to share insights and lessons from the work that your organisation is doing to rebuild better, please do get in touch with our team. We’d love to hear from you.
