The extent of the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is, frankly, bewildering. For us at Yunus Social Business, both as individuals and as an organisation, 2020 was a year that posed huge challenges.
In the midst of these setbacks, one thing has brought us particular encouragement: through our partnerships with our funders, through our collaboration with our portfolio social businesses and through teamwork with our remarkable colleagues and team members, we have been able to carry out work which has shown us that we are an organisation that lives up to its mission and remains true to its purpose.
Discover more in our 2020 Annual Report.
For us, COVID-19 has made clearer than ever the importance of social businesses within our societies and economies throughout the world. How many times have we heard about “building back better” or increased focus on “stakeholder capitalism”? Social businesses represent the better, more inclusive capitalism that we all want to see, and businesses great and small throughout the world have a huge amount to learn from them.
Going forward, we at Yunus Social Business will continue to do everything in our power to finance and support these game-changing social businesses and bring more attention to them, as they deserve. At the same time, we will continue to work with corporations and support them in learning best practices from the fantastic social-business entrepreneurs in our portfolio and beyond.
Fresh water is abundant in Bangladesh, in the form of numerous groundwater resources that are shallow and easy to exploit. However, for essentially geological reasons, almost all of the groundwater is contaminated with arsenic, very often at levels that make it a health hazard.
This year, we turn 10 years old! We are taking this opportunity to highlight and celebrate the inspiring partners in our community, reflect on the valuable lessons we've learned along the way and look forward to designing the next decade.
Solene, our Communications Manager for the MAN Impact Accelerator speaks about the challenges faced by smallholder farmers and how they should be empowered rather than exploited by intermediaries, looking at examples from across our work at YSB.