Economic Empowerment

Back in 2014 when Whole Planet Foundation's partner in Indonesia, KOMIDA, found that 40% of their own clients lacked a toilet, they wanted to address sanitation specifically as part of their social mission.

The Global Reporting Initiative's draft Standard on corporate tax makes a pioneering stride in tax transparency by combining management approach disclosures on tax strategy, with country-by-country reporting of an organization’s business activities and taxes paid.

Global Reporting Initiative paves the way for more transparency around corporate tax practices. The draft tax and payments to governments standard is open for public comment. Share your feedback now.

Thrive, a microfinance business based in Harare, Zimbabwe believes in lending that leads to economic growth for women and girls who would ordinarily fail to access financial services from the mainstream financial sector. Thrive joins Business Call to Action with a commitment that will provide microenterprise loans and borrowing and business management training for 16,500 economically active low-income women and girls.

We are committed to using our platform to democratize financial services and improve financial health. See how PayPal is expanding our products and services to offer our customers more flexibility in how they manage their financial lives.

Earlier this year, Erb Institute student, Chris Owen, MBA/MS 2020, worked with Casa María Amor in Cuenca, Ecuador via an Erb Institute Impact Project. This video features such a project. Casa María Amor is a women’s shelter on the outskirts of Cuenca in the Andes Mountains. Chris conceived, developed and launched an Erb Impact project to help the women of Casa María Amor develop skills aimed at achieving economic independence after leaving abusive relationships.

Only one month remains of 2018, but we are feeling invigorated after an eventful three months since our last News Bite and looking forward to the year ahead! Important themes for us over the past few months have been human rights, women's economic empowerment and digitalisation. Read more below about activities in these areas - and thank you to all of you who participated in and supported them. Looking forward, we're also really excited to share the findings of our State of Inclusive Business Survey - more on this below.

Getting SMEs to participate in sustainability reporting is a challenge. The Global Reporting Initiative and the Swiss government embarked on an experiment to addresses this challenge in Ghana. By helping SMEs in Ghana to report for the first time, the experience showed that sustainability reporting can lead to clear business benefits for smaller companies in developing countries.

“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” Oprah Winfrey

Timberland’s work to reintroduce cotton farming to Haiti was honored recently with the US Chamber of Commerce Citizenship Award for the Best Economic Empowerment Program. In partnership with the Smallholder Farmers Alliance(SFA), the global outdoor lifestyle brand aims to create a new supply chain for sustainable cotton for use in its products through a program that will also contribute to reforesting Haiti and improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.