Social Change Archives - Page 5 of 5

Ulrike 2 March 2011 11 Comments

the girl effect

On the 8 March 2011 we are celebrating the centennary of International Women’s Day – a good occasion to remind us of the plight of girls around the world.

Did you realise that currently:

women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours, produce half the world’s food, and yet earn only 10 % of the world’s income and own less than 1% of the world’s property?
women make up 70% of the worlds 1.3 billion people who live in poverty?
women over the age of 15 in the least developed countries are twice as likely to be illiterate than men.

The solution? [Read more…]

Ulrike 21 February 2011 6 Comments

“More than you’ll ever need … inside!”

In keeping with our recent focus on consumption I was struck by the call of a Sri Lankan scientist to assist “rich countries to curb their climate-damaging consumption habits through a set of consumption goals – in the same way the poor have ‘Millennium Development Goals’ (MDG’s) to get them out of poverty”.

What a brilliant idea! His reasoning is obvious: 20% of the worlds richest people are responsible for 80% of consumption.

And of course, the always impressive team at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington responded to the call with a first draft: [Read more…]

Ulrike 23 November 2010 Leave a Comment

from social investment to social return on investment

a social enterprise????

I recently attended the inaugural ”Social Return Forum” put together by a colleague of mine, Oliver Wagg of New Climate for the 3 Pillars Network.

Concepts like social investment, social return on investment and a social investment market are much talked about lately by social investors, social entrepreneurs, those generating social profits and intermediaries alike and seem to have gone mainstream – and for good reasons:

We all want and need to know if our efforts are making a difference to the issues we are trying to address.

This evidence base to inform further investment has been missing in large parts of the social sector.

Evidence of social returns is instrumental for those investing funds in social issues and who are convincing others of the merit of these investment.

To state the obvious and track back a little – we are hungry for alternative approaches to welfare funding and need evidence about whether approaches work or not. [Read more…]