Steven Colbert once noted, “If the human body is 98 percent water, why am I only 2 percent interested?” Colbert’s jab appropriately questions our wasteful mindset regarding our most precious resource. Our food supply can be viewed similarly: how can we so easily accept wastage levels of 30-40 percent of life-sustaining food resources?
Similar to a community’s “Main Street,” PNC helps its people, cities, neighborhoods and local businesses. As a Main Street bank, PNC is committed to delivering on each of its strategic priorities while looking out for the best interests of all stakeholders, including customers, communities, employees and shareholders.
After nearly five years, a team of John Deere managers recently returned to three villages in rural Rajasthan, India, with great anticipation and a simple purpose: to see whether the Joint Initiative for Village Advancement (JIVA) was living up to its name.
JIVA, which means “life” and “livelihood” in the local Mewari dialect, is a joint project of the John Deere Foundation and PYXERA Global that is designed to empower smallholder farming communities to improve their lives through agricultural training, educational enrichment, and capacity-building. The John Deere team, which included Chairman and CEO Sam Allen, first recognized the project’s potential while volunteering in the same villages in 2011.
JIVA, which means “life” and “livelihood” in the local Mewari dialect, is a joint project of the John Deere Foundation and PYXERA Global that is designed to empower smallholder farming communities to improve their lives through agricultural training, educational enrichment, and capacity-building. The John Deere team, which included Chairman and CEO Sam Allen, first recognized the project’s potential while volunteering in the same villages in 2011.
This week, the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) was launched. General Mills was part of this pilot benchmark which evaluated the top 98 companies across agriculture, apparel and extractives (those industries considered at highest risk). A collaborative initiative led by investors and human rights organizations, CHRB is the first public benchmark that ranks companies on their policies, practices and actions on human rights.
Formed in 1935, the Ghana Registered Midwives Association (GRMA) aims to promote and protect the interest and welfare of midwives across the country. Midwives play an integral role in improving access to healthcare in Ghana where they provide more than 60 percent of all maternal and child healthcare services and deliver more than half of all babies.
“Midwives are often the first point of contact for pregnant women in Ghana, especially in rural and deprived communities,” said Fredrica Hanson, Senior Program Manager, GRMA. “Midwives can be found at almost every level of the healthcare system.”
“Midwives are often the first point of contact for pregnant women in Ghana, especially in rural and deprived communities,” said Fredrica Hanson, Senior Program Manager, GRMA. “Midwives can be found at almost every level of the healthcare system.”
We also get asked this question A LOT: “How do you do it? How do you get companies, NGOs, and government agencies to work together?” So, we decided to stop simply talking about the power of partnership – now we are teaching it, too. With experience designing and implementing partnerships in more than 90 countries, working with more than 30 multinational corporations, and over 28,000 local businesses, NGOs, government agencies, and educational institutions, we’ve learned a thing or two about getting very different collaborators to agree on mutually beneficial goals.
Across the agricultural landscape, critical crop yield interventions like fertilizers, bio-pesticides, drought resistant seeds, and better farming practices have been the predominate methods of improving food security. But what about the basket of tomatoes that falls off the back of a truck on a bumpy road? Or the crate of produce that spoils in the heat before ever reaching its destination? Or the fields of fruit that rot on the vine due to a seasonal glut? While these situations may seem inconsequential, individual moments of food loss add up over time.
Like an infant who sees rapid physical changes in the short amount of time to toddlerhood, adolescents experience the same kind of rapid change in their social and emotional development on their way to adulthood. Traditional thinking on adolescence characterizes this as a time when youth display negative risk-taking behaviors. A Positive Youth Development (PYD) approach, long used in the United States and other industrialized countries, takes a different view. It treats adolescence as an opportunity to harness the great energy and emotional growth that takes place during this developmental stage.