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Accelerating Systems Change: An Innovative Accelerator Shows How Funders Can Amplify Social Enterprises’ Impact by Transforming Their Funding Model
There’s a growing belief that lasting solutions to today's complex challenges will require fundamental changes to the systems that underlie these issues. According to Celia Sanchez-Valladares Barahona, Stella Printezi and Lucía Tornero at Ashoka, social entrepreneurs are well-placed to accelerate systems change, but the funding models they rely on may end up prolonging the issues they're trying to solve. They explain how funders can transform these increasingly outdated models to better support long-term, systemic change, as illustrated by an accelerator co-created by Ashoka and IKEA Social Entrepreneurship.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Viewpoint: Social Finance: We Can’t Change Education Outcomes if We Don’t Innovate
Facing a global learning crisis, how an innovative development impact bond focussed on improving learning outcomes for students.
- Categories
- Education, Technology
- Region
- Global
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Some Things Have to Die for Others to Live: Why Scaling Down is Just as Important as Scaling Up in the Transformation of Global Food Systems
Multiple crises have exposed the fragility and inequity of global food systems. But according to Eva Valencia and Lennart Woltering at CIMMYT and Frédéric Goulet at CIRAD, strategies to transform the world's food systems typically focus on introducing or scaling up new innovations and programs, while failing to scale down the habits, mindsets and institutions that are perpetuating the problem. They explore a key example of this issue — the ongoing use of unsustainable farming practices like tilling — and discuss how farmers can move toward more sustainable "no-till" practices that protect soil health.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Analysis: Here’s How 16 Social Innovators Are Leading Change at Davos
The Schwab Foundation’s Social Innovators of the Year 2023 includes a list of outstanding founders, business leaders, and government reformers.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Global
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Press Release: USDA and USAID Announce the Global Food Security Research Strategy to Fight Hunger and Build Sustainable Systems
The new strategy builds on an exceptional record of achievement from past U.S. investments across agriculture and food systems research.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Global
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Below the Tip of the Iceberg: Why Systems Change is the Key to Scaling Innovations and Solving Development Challenges
In recent years there has been an increased focus on systems change in the development sector, in response to growing awareness of how underlying systemic causes are perpetuating many global challenges. María Boa-Alvarado at CIMMYT, Lennart Woltering at One CGIAR and Marcos Sanjuán at CRS-El Salvador discuss the benefits of this approach, as applied to the issue of land degradation in Central America. They explore how their organizations are using a systems thinking tool, the iceberg model, to better understand the root causes of this problem – and to provide lasting solutions.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Technology
- Tags
- innovation, scale, systems change
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Our Obsession with ‘Systems Change’ Leaves Marginalized Women Vulnerable – Let’s Empower Them to Advocate for Themselves
Last December, while driving through rural Uganda, KadAfrica founder Rebecca Kaduru was gravely injured in a car accident. Taken to the district hospital, she faced a stark reality: There was no doctor, no medications, not even gauze and sutures. The experience highlighted the barriers to women's empowerment in the country, where hospitals like this are often the best option for maternal health emergencies, and care is only available to those who fight for it. Kaduru explores why gender equality requires less focus on changing systems, and more on helping women advocate for themselves.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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The Least Sexy Approach to Development: Why We Need to Focus on Systems Change
Even within the systems-change sector, people joke that it is one of the least “sexy” facets of development work. Focused on addressing the faults in social, economic and political systems that lead to problems like poverty, the approach can be overwhelmingly complex, which has limited its widespread implementation. But as Lexi Doolittle at S3IDF explains, a market-based approach that nudges these systems towards greater inclusivity and productivity is a vital tool to catalyze social change – one that we cannot afford to overlook.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise, Uncategorized
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