Integrating Sustainability into Core Business Strategy – through prioritising ethical and sustainably sourcing within their supply chains, businesses can make a huge impact and progress against their long term social and environment goals. By using certified ingredients through the likes of Fairtrade, companies can progress their commitments to ethical labour practises and environmentally friendly production processes. This will help to create long lasting impact across their business
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- Priorities for business to max social/environmental impact
Hi Anita Tiessen, CEO of Youth Business International. 2025 is a year of continuing economic and political turmoil and in that context I think it’s important for businesses to stay the course and not be blown off track. In particular, I think it’s critical for businesses to embrace inclusion and sustainability across their operations, and reflect those in the communities in which they operate. Industry and community wide collaborations – especially to tackle systemic problems – will be ever more important. For example, at Youth Business International were are developing an Africa Collaborative to take a more systemic, longer-term approach to building inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems to support young entrepreneurs to building thriving businesses.
For sure! Producers and communities should be at the center of all these discussions and is imperative to include them in the decision making
A1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Hiring Practices: Companies need to hire global talent to build more inclusive and diverse teams, leveraging the benefits of remote work to access skills and perspectives from underrepresented communities, including refugees. Remote hiring not only addresses talent shortages but also fosters economic empowerment and inclusion, particularly for refugees and those in underserved areas, enabling businesses to drive meaningful social impact while enhancing innovation and growth. Companies need to continue to implement equitable hiring practices and create pathways for underrepresented groups. including refugees. This often requires rethinking traditional recruiting practices by prioritizing skills-based assessments, removing unnecessary location or credential barriers, and creating pathways for marginalized groups to enter the workforce. This employer’s guide supports companies to hire refugees.
Skill-Based Volunteering: Encourage employees to apply their professional skills to benefit local communities or nonprofit organizations. Unlike general volunteering, skills-based initiatives tackle specific challenges, such as mentoring underserved communities, or developing technology solutions for social causes. This approach maximizes the value of employee contributions, fosters deeper engagement, and builds the capacity of partner organizations to achieve their missions more effectively. Offering paid volunteer days as a standard employee benefit to show a genuine commitment to social responsibility.
a1. Key priorities or actions - All aligning with actionable Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) on climate that unlock opportunities for investment and growth – good for business, good for communities, good for collaboration as we globally re-imagine resilience.
Also help social impact organizations with more than funding – continue to help us improve our metrics, our marketing, our innovation, our growth and scale.
- Most significant challenges the social impact community will likely face in 2025, and how could we approach them?
There are strong headwinds for many in the social impact community in 2025. More challenging political contexts and a constrained funding environment will challenge many impact organisations. Globally, shrinking international development assistance will put pressure across the system. The rise of AI present both opportunities and challenges in social impact, with significant innovation taking place alongside issues of inclusive and culturally relevant AI.
A1: Forced displacement is one of the defining social issues of our time. The growing number (1) and duration of displacement and the increasing strain on humanitarian budgets require new solutions to this issue. While vital, humanitarian efforts are not sufficient to address the systemic, long-term challenges faced by displaced communities, including access to employment, economic opportunity, and self-reliance. Private-sector-led solutions are critical.
Business leaders can be a part of the solution by adopting a “refugee-lens” approach, which integrates “refugees” (2) into core business strategies through employment, tailored products and services, sourcing, and access to financing. The Refugee Lens - Refugee Investment Network
More generally, businesses can maximize their impact by prioritizing inclusive economic development, focusing on supporting the economic participation of marginalized groups and investing in local ecosystems to achieve this. Refugees that participate in local economies become contributors to the private sector, bringing unique skills as a loyal, hardworking workforce; expanding markets; and creating diverse and resilient supply chains as entrepreneurs and producers. Seeing refugees as an asset turns forced displacement from a humanitarian challenge into an economic opportunity for all.
Forced displacement cuts across 13 of the 17 SDGs, and, “for investors seeking to achieve gender equality, improve the infrastructure of developing nations, accelerate climate resiliency, or reduce inequalities – investing in displaced communities is an imperative.” (RIN, 2019) https://refugeeinvestments.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/RIN_Paradigm_Shift.pdf
(1) In 2024, the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide surpassed 120 million—the highest in history after doubling over the past decade—and this figure is projected to exceed 300 million by 2030.
(2) Refugees, for our purposes here, is an inclusive term referring to all forcibly displaced people.
Susana, completely agree with your points. Poverty Stoplight works as a program within “Fundación Paraguaya”, a nonprofit located in Paraguay but working in 59 countries around the world.
One of our most celebrated programs also happens to include microfinance and our champions within the program are the Paraguayan women. We have women’s committees where groups of women hold each other accountable in their repayment of the loans, forge community groups and help each other all around. The Poverty Stoplight program is also implemented amongst these groups of women to help guide them and create sustainable change – not just financial improvement but also overall well-being – within their lives. We’ve seen incredible success in this.
Does the BBVA Microfinance Foundation do anything similar?
A1: I think there are two priorities:
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With the rise of legislation requiring due diligence and integrated human rights, environment and climate analysis, businesses are trying to better understand how to streamline risk assessments, prioritization, and data for decision making. Businesses should focus on streamlining their impact, risk, and opportunity assessment process across business units and not see them as siloed tasks (e.g. sustainability or legal teams looking at human rights issues; operations teams looking at environmental health and safety (EHS) issues, supply chain teams looking at due diligence in supply chains) but rather as interdependent assessments that can help inform ways to decarbonize, streamline supplier engagement, increase resilience through by balancing environmental, social, and economic pressures in supplier countries.
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While comprehensive analysis is important to help businesses understand their most salient actual and potential social and environmental negative impacts and risks, there is little doubt that - at a fundamental operational level - businesses need to start with is to pay ALL their workers a fair, living wage - which covers local needs for food, housing, and medical care, and adjusting for cost of living increases. This should begin within own operations and then be sought to be rolled out into their supply chains. Therefore, identifying whether there is a living wage gap, how to close that gap, and setting a plan in place to do so, should be top priority.
Hello, my name is Layla Meerloo, I am part of the Global Team at the Living Wage Foundation UK ( Global Living Wage | Living Wage Foundation)
- One piece of guidance to a corporate social impact leader for 2025
My observation is that corporate social impact strategies are in almost constant flux, making it difficult to have the longer-term view and impact. My guidance would be, as much as possible, to focus on a core thread that cuts across business imperatives and social impact partnerships that will help you stay the course and continue to make impact while bigger picture strategies evolve.
to the systems that keep people in poverty and vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and nature loss; working alongside communities to create resilient livelihoods and thriving, inclusive societies. The majority of our work is with agricultural and indigenous communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, so my perspectives come from this experience and from working with companies in the food and agriculture supply chain and with renewable energy companies who we work with to support climate-resilient and regenerative agriculture and provide energy solutions to last mile communities.
Firstly continue to do everything possible to reduce carbon emissions and work in coalitions with other companies and civil society to rapidly increase climate action. The climate crisis is accelerating and exacerbating and range of other highly significant social and environmental challenges including food insecurity, conflict and migration and we need to continue to build momentum again.
If we truly want to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and reduce poverty, we must focus on the communities and groups that are most left behind. And often, those communities are the displaced people, particularly women and children, who are affected by conflict and crisis.
Business leaders like you are uniquely positioned to make a significant impact. You’re in rooms where non-profits like ours are not—sitting at tables with ministers of finance, trade, and decision-makers who shape the future of economies. In many cases, business leaders are respected and have the power to influence policy and drive change in ways that others cannot.
You have an incredible opportunity to reshape the narrative around displacement. It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. When we talk about integrating refugees and displaced people into the economies of host countries, we’re not talking about an added burden—we’re talking about new opportunities for growth, innovation, and progress. By focusing on inclusion, we create more people who can contribute to the economy, paying taxes, buying goods, and creating new ideas for new products and services.
As business leaders, you have the voice and the platform to advocate for solutions that benefit everyone. Standing in solidarity with displaced communities and pushing for creative, inclusive policies can help transform displacement into an engine for long-term social and economic prosperity. I urge you to use your influence not just for business success, but for the success of the most marginalized, who often have no voice at the table. Together, we can turn crisis into opportunity, and in doing so, help drive forward the progress we all want to see in the world.
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Hi Stephanie lovely to see you on here 
Skilling youth in Food processing which can be the panacea to meet the Food security needs of our population
What priorities or actions should businesses focus on in 2025 to maximize their social and environmental impact?
-with new/increased constraints, being intentional/focused is more important than ever. Don’t try to solve everything. There is so much urgent need in the world right now – and it’s worth taking the time to analyze ‘where can we, uniquely, make the most impactful contribution?’
- By mapping your core organizational assets/business functions to where they can make the most impact, you can uncover how to get the most social return on investment
- Don’t skip the discovery/empathy building step – with limited resources, it’s worth taking the time to validate (lean start-up style) before putting all your eggs in one basket
- That same empathy building also needs to extend internally, to your own employees/workforce. Your employees crave meaningful work, personal growth opportunities, and well-being support. Offer upskilling related to future-ready skills, provide mental health resources and flexible working arrangements, and focus on building a workplace that values collaboration and purpose-driven leadership.
-embrace partnerships/collaboration – no single organization could possibly tackle the scope/complexity of challenges that our world currently faces.
- Partnerships are a way to unlock mutual benefit, and make limited resources go even further in a targeted way: collaborate with cross-sector partners to amplify scale and effectiveness, ensuring solutions are inclusive and resilient to future challenges.
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I think really understanding what a human rights economy means i.e. supporting the work on this by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Ultimately this means a review of business models. Tall order I know but that for me is the ambition,
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- What priorities or actions should businesses focus on in 2025 to maximize their social and environmental impact?
Empowering Women and Youth
Women constitute over 43% of the global agricultural workforce, yet they often face obstacles to access resources such as training, technology, finance, and land. Addressing this disparity is not only a matter of equity but also of economic efficiency. Closing this gap in agriculture can significantly boost productivity and enhance global food systems. For instance, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that improving access to resources could increase agricultural output in developing countries by up to 4%, reducing the number of hungry people in the world by 100-150 million.
Africa’s youth population is projected to double to over 830 million by 2050, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity. The continent’s working-age population is expected to rise from 849 million in 2024 to 1.56 billion by 2050, accounting for 85% of the global workforce increase. They will be the global talent pool, the trend setters, and the problem solvers of the future. Investing in skills development, entrepreneurship, and employment opportunities for this demographic is crucial not only for sustainable economic growth and social stability, but for the future of global supply chains and markets.
Investing in women’s empowerment enables global buyers to strengthen supply chain performance by boosting agricultural yields, enhancing crop quality, increasing resilience to climate and economic shocks, and fostering long-term farmer loyalty. Similarly, empowering youth cultivates a pipeline of skilled laborers, reduces poverty, drives economic growth, promotes civic engagement, and nurtures the next generation of consumers and innovators—ensuring sustainable markets and resilient communities worldwide.
Tanager equips businesses and institutions to deliver on both business returns and social impact. We promote economic empowerment by integrating women and youth into supply chains and leadership roles, as exemplified by our SELEVER II program in Burkina Faso, which leverages poultry markets. We focus on nutrition-sensitive and gender-integrated approaches across Africa, as demonstrated by our IGNITE+ program which builds institutional capacity to deliver inclusive agricultural solutions. And we facilitate entrepreneurship, skill development, and access to financial services through our Carrefour des Opportunités (CarrOpps) program which fosters youth employment.
Supporting Climate-Resilient Agriculture and Sustainability
Smallholder farmers are increasingly vulnerable to unpredictable weather patterns, soil degradation, and water scarcity. Investing in climate-resilient agricultural practices is essential to ensure food security, reliable livelihoods, and sustainable supply chains.
At the COP29 conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, developed nations pledged $300 billion annually by 2035 to support developing countries in tackling climate change. This funding is part of a larger commitment to mobilize $1.3 trillion per year by 2035, with substantial contributions anticipated from the private sector. Businesses can seize this opportunity by leveraging these funds investing in sustainable agriculture and forming public-private partnerships (PPPs) to scale impactful projects. These collaborations enable the pooling of resources, expertise, and innovation—empowering both sectors to implement large-scale solutions that might otherwise be unattainable independently.
Tanager supports climate-resilient farming practices through our Shubh Mint program in India, which improves yields, reduces production costs, and promotes sustainable practices. We promote climate-smart practices and regenerative agriculture through our Imbewu 2 project in South Africa.
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Refocus and refresh the business case for social and environmental impact, and the advancement of worker rights as an imperative for business and society, particularly in the current climate that is undermining those rights and challenging need for social and environmental impact.
Double down on impact focus – it’s vital to maintain this focus amid the multiplicity of demands on ESG teams to do more reporting. Whilst reporting is important for accountability, it shouldn’t come at the expense of identifying and delivering change, and the resource needed to do it. Environmental and social impact should also go hand-in-hand, those teams shouldn’t work in siloes, but be looking to pool resources and work together to address barriers to achieving impact.
Ensure that social impact commitments, particularly those in value chains, aren’t made in isolation from procurement teams. Ensure that procurement teams have ownership and accountability for implementation.
Embed social commitments meaningfully into the company’s own procurement practices as well as supplier codes of conduct (not just companies shifting responsibility upstream but examining their own role in enabling changes).
Worker voice should be a priority too – through meaningful worker engagement, understanding the risks and challenges. Regulation is making this is a requirement, but there are opportunities to go beyond on this and make human rights due diligence people-centred. Site-level grievance mechanisms are a part of this, and an area that Oxfam’s Business Advisory Service can support businesses with. But also, engaging with workers, peers and civil society organisations like Oxfam is critical to staying connected to real lived experience, and to be challenged to do better. Don’t be afraid of challenge or criticism. Embrace it as an indicator that change is needed and you’re not alone in it.
Living Wage!
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- For companies in the agriculture sector:
a) focus on increasing the shift to more regenerative agriculture. This is critical for soil health and sustainable food production.
Example
Practical Action has been working with partners for many years to demonstrate pathways to more regenerative agriculture in different contexts. For example, through a collaboration with the IKEA Foundation we worked on different options for supply chains such as poultry and vegetables with a particular focus on enabling good jobs for young people and thriving rural economies in Kenya. Learnings from this informed a scaled-up approach Resilient Agriculture for Youth supported by Mastercard Foundation focusing on poultry, African leafy vegetables, tomatoes, and oil crops (groundnuts and soybeans) value chains. This programme aims to increase income and job opportunities for 100,000 young people over five years.
Linking with other companies and partners in alliances that are moving forward regenerative agriculture in particular areas can be very valuable. Don’t get too stuck on definitions, there are now many simple tools that help companies check whether they are making progress. For example Practical Action uses Practical Action offers tools like the Regenerative Agriculture Planning & Implementation Diagnostic (RAPID) to identify and track progress toward regenerative agriculture.
Supporting the development of the organic input sector is crucial for scaling up regenerative approaches. Practical Action is involved in some great circular economy partnerships. For example working with Kakamega County government, Kenya and private sector company, Regen Organics in Circular Economy for Household Organic Waste (CE4HOW). This programme reduces greenhouse gas emissions, improves household waste services, and transforms the lives of informal waste workers, whilst producing organic inputs which are then used by local farmers including those involved in our regenerative agriculture partnership.
It has also opened up business opportunities for young agro-dealers while promoting sustainable farming practices. Trained community members play a key role in educating farmers about organic inputs and other regenerative methods.
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