How can business build gender equality into supply chains? Oxfam’s Ulrike Joras and Gaël Lescornec of the World Cocoa Foundation, share lessons from the cocoa industry and introduce a new shared initiative. From South Africa to Somalia, we have both spent over a decade working on issues related to poverty and inequality. While this work has often generated more questions …
Conflicts don’t just end, they are transformed into peace
Twenty years on from the Good Friday Agreement Fionna Smyth reflects on the process of conflict resolution and the role of humanitarian organizations. Growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1970s I experienced the trauma of conflict first hand. Some of my friends and family suffered directly; others were scarred in less visible ways, from the hyper-vigilance, the lack of …
A fairer way to do business?
What if business could put people before profit? Oxfam’s Future of Business Initiative is promoting alternatives to the shareholder first model of business, as Alex Maitland explains. Oxfam has a long history of challenging the economic structures that keep people in poverty. Our Even It Up and Food and Climate campaigns demonstrate that inequality, in-work poverty and climate change are …
From waste to value: using solid waste for good sanitation in Uganda’s refugee settlements
WASH Advisor Parvin Ngala explains how Oxfam is working with others to turn solid waste into valuable energy in some of Uganda’s refugee settlements. In any densely populated area, good sanitation is bound to be a challenge. More so in a refugee settlement where essential facilities are often inadequate considering a rapid influx of people and massive populations. In 2016, …
What alternative business models do we need to help beat poverty?
[buzzsprout episode=’2559217′ player=’true’] Erinch Sahan, Chief Executive of the World Fairtrade Organisation speaks to Sophi Tranchell, CEO of Divine Chocolate and Lisa Dacanay, President of the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia. They share their experiences in social enterprises and alternative business models which are working right now to help make business fairer. This podcast was recorded ahead of Oxfam’s Future of …
Resilience in South Sudan: surviving today, hope for tomorrow
Jess Fullwood-Thomas reports back from South Sudan on Oxfam’s work with local partners rebuilding livelihoods, tackling gender inequality and promoting good governance. I’ve recently returned from South Sudan where Oxfam is supporting communities to cope with the ongoing crisis that has left four million people displaced and thousands killed. The last four years have decimated a country that only a …
Reflecting on the use of qualitative comparative analysis
Guest blog by Johannes Meuer, Anne Ellersiek, Daniel Shephard and Christian Rupietta – the evaluation team who undertook a meta review of Oxfam’s effectiveness reviews of policy influence, citizens voice and good governance initiatives. During the last few years, there has been increasing interest in using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as an alternative method for evaluation of policy change or advocacy …
Technical learning from the meta-analysis of women’s empowerment projects
Kristen McCollum, consultant at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), shares with us the learning from Oxfam’s meta-analyses on women’s empowerment. When we first decided to conduct a meta-analysis on women’s empowerment Effectiveness Reviews (ERs), the idea was to go where no impact evaluation had gone before. While the Effectiveness Reviews give us a rigorous measurement of the impact …
Care work matters – public services and infrastructure can make a difference
Thalia Kidder and Claudia Canepa explain why unpaid care work matters in tackling poverty and gender inequality, and discuss what can be done to recognise, reduce and redistribute the work load. Sustainable Development Goal 5.4 mandates that governments ‘recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion …