Studies from organisations including NYU Stern School of Business show time and time again that sustainability goes hand in hand with better business performance, so it makes sense to talk about your startup’s sustainability efforts. But how best to do this?
Whether you’re at the start of a sustainability journey or already away down the road, here are five simple strategies to power up your sustainability communications.
Impact in emerging markets in 2022: Seizing the digital transformation to drive inclusive and sustainable growth. If the pandemic had a silver lining in emerging markets, it was as a super-spreader of small business digitization. The online trend, which extended to informal businesses and gig workers, is in turn expanding access to working capital, growth financing and other financial services. Traditional sources of capital like banks, development finance institutions and microfinance have largely failed to fill the $5 trillion annual financing gap for informal and small businesses in emerging markets. Enterprise tech startups are using the troves of data they’re collecting to build their own customized small-business financial services (see, “How tech innovation is bridging gaps in small business financing in emerging markets“). Such embedded finance gives customers “who aren’t able to access traditional financial services a way to grow their businesses, protect their livelihoods, and save for their futures,” Accion Venture Lab’s Amee Parbhoo told ImpactAlpha. In 2022, we’ll be on the hunt for tech providers that can prove they’re having a material positive impact on revenues, income and jobs.
Born into the lowest tiers of a rigid caste system in a tiny remote village in the Himalayas, Sanduk Ruit started life with absolutely nothing to his name: no money and no connections. Few would have guessed that he would grow to become one of the most respected eye surgeons in the world and a titan of Asia who, in 2006, was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award – the Asian equivalent of a Nobel prize.
Since launching in mid-2021, the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation has screened 63,257 patients as it climbs toward its target of screening 1,000,000 patients by 2026.
The lockdowns of 2021 saw the beginning of a remarkable partnership between two sexagenarians who are bringing social and economic change to the most deprived communities in the developing world.
Since 2017, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been working with other humanitarian organisations – including UNICEF and UN Women – to bring cash-based assistance to refugees through blockchain technology.
