Browse by Theme: Livelihoods

Women in Bangladesh used solidarity to increase wages and get more food at home. Find out how.

Women in CARE Ghana’s PROMISE programme eat three times more soybeans than they did in 2012, and are four times more likely to be involved in household decision-making. Find out how.

Demand for financial services from low-income groups is at an all-time high. Some of that demand is by informal savings and loans groups – including CARE’s 5 million Village Savings and Loan Association members – who want access to quality group bank accounts and mobile-based solutions. East Africa is leading the world in setting up informal savings groups and linking them to formal financial services. The recent East Africa Linkage Summit provided exactly the kinds of insights that other regions can learn from to scale up financial inclusion in 2017.

CARE’s programmes on dignified work have for a number of years included training sessions for women in factories. Recent research provides further evidence, backing up our own findings, that investing in training for women workers makes good business sense for factory owners.

Since starting an internship at CARE International UK in the Policy and Advocacy team, I’ve had the chance to support research on women’s economic empowerment programmes, with a specific focus on the ready-made garment sector in South East Asia. CARE’s broader role in training value chain workers in partnership with companies like Mondelez, establishing savings groups with women, and committing to a Dignified Work agenda, is crucial to tackling widespread injustice in global value chains across all industries. Researching ready-made garment value chains specifically has led me to re-evaluate some of my own shopping habits, and shown me that change has to come from consumers.

This week CARE launches its newest paper on women’s economic empowerment in fragile settings and I’ll be laying out the key points in a presentation online and in person (Thursday 8 December, 12-2pm). Here is a preview of what I’ll be saying.

How can Mondelēz International – the world’s biggest chocolate company – show their consumers that their chocolate is produced in a sustainable way?