Sustainable Development Goals

The Change has the capacity, tenacity, and drive to create a world-changing legacy. The Change supports founders through capital, contacts, mentorship, and coaching to enable world-changing companies that have been selected because they will make an impact at the right time through the right team on the right project.

The Change at its core is a movement of individuals and capital, driven to create disruption with impact, thus creating a legacy that will stand the test of time. As part of our legacy, we aim to address the pressing societal, economic, and environmental challenges.

Our focus on giving back is core to the creation of abundance. Monetary success is among the many positive consequences of a positive community and environmentally focused organization set on doing good.

As part of our global attitude to change we:

Work together with academic institutions, NGO’s, and GO’s to bring commercial focus to best-of-breed technologies.

Run Hackathons to spark a new generation of entrepreneurs to develop their ideas and concepts.

Work globally to enable education, healthcare and understanding.

Run events for local charities promoting good causes, engaging investors and entrepreneurs in doing good for Northern Ireland and beyond.

We will measure impact and ensure that we can quantify the sociological and environmental outcomes of our work.

See how we help via collaboration with
a series of GROUPS

Environmental Social Governance

Some highlights of how Environmental Social Governance has evolved through history

Our commitment to the UN sustainable development goals is comprehensive and wide ranging. Our aim is to be The Change. Our clients projects need to incorporate solid principles of ESG.

If they do not we ensure to work together to ensure that their company transforms from a profit only focused company to a company which holds a sustainability focus.

Its clear that since the advent of the new millennium, the world has witnessed the emergence of a number of movements led by entrepreneurs, consumers, and thought-leaders that are challenging the status quo, demanding new standards and organisational models, and reinventing the role of business in society.

Some highlights of how Environmental Social Governance has evolved through history

First Nature Reserve 676Cuthbert of Lindisfarne enacts protection legislation for birds on the Farne Islands (Northumberland, UK).

George Peabody (1795–1869) is the acknowledged father of modern philanthropy. A financier based in Baltimore and London, in the 1860s he began to endow libraries and museums in the United States, and also funded housing for poor people in London. His activities became the model for Andrew Carnegie and many others

Social Economy – The term “social economy” derives from the French économie sociale, first recorded about 1900. The sector comprises four families of organisations: cooperatives, mutuals, associations (voluntary organisations) and foundations (which, in France, must be of “public utility”).

The Circular Economy – first coined by Kenneth E. Boulding 1966.

Social Entrepreneurship – Bill Drayton of Ashoka coined the phrase Social Entrepreneurship in 1980, the term social entrepreneurship has become somewhat of a catch-all phrase. Originally it referred to someone with the passion of an entrepreneur tackling a social challenge..

Social Capital – James Coleman developed his concept of social capital (1988) to explain central workings of human capital, elaborating on the ideas of Gary Becker while Bourdieu added the term to the concepts of cultural and symbolic capital (Bourdieu) that had been developing since the 1960s.

Fair Trade – Following persistent appeals for fairness in trade from Mexican small-scale coffee farmers, the Fairtrade Foundation is established in 1992 by CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Traidcraft, the World Development Movement and the National Federation of Women’s Institutes.

The Fourth Sector Sabeti – a term they coined in (1998) — as “a new economic space at the intersection of the three traditional sectors (public, private and non-profit).” (2018) “The emerging Fourth Sector is fundamentally comprised of organizations that pursue social purposes while engaging in business activities.”

Cradle to Cradle manufacturing was defined as a set of design principles which was developed in the 1990s by Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart, William McDonough and EPEA Hamburg. It stands for innovation, quality and beneficial design. In 2002 the pair released the book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were born at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. The objective was to produce a set of universal goals that meet the urgent environmental, political and economic challenges facing our world.

Environmental Social Governance is arguably attributed to General Kofi Annan after his writing to institutional leaders urging them to shift their focus to ESG in 2004. The term predates this the practice of ESG investing began in the 1960s as socially responsible investing, with investors excluding stocks or entire industries from their portfolios based on business activities such as tobacco production or involvement in the South African apartheid regime.

Impact Investing – the term “impact investing” was coined by The Rockefeller Foundation 2007 -Inclusive Business.

Conscious Capitalism – John Mackey and marketing professor and speaker Raj Sisodia in their book “Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business.” 2014.

At The Change, we believe in business having purpose and whatever the buzzword of the day, we are here to benefit the planet and its challenges over the coming years. The Sustainable development goals form a valuable framework for us to express and categorize the differences we will make.

Unlike many single goal-focused organizations, our group believes in a holistic approach to improving our economy’s future and aims to use the SDG goals to communicate the work we do at The Change.

Every company we work with is required to touch one of the ESG goals, if not more, and as a result of a focused effort for good, we expect to make a real difference to our planet.

Read More

Sustainable Development Goals &
thoughts from The Change

Consumer appetites for electrical energy and complex products are in ever increasing demand and as a result the natural world suffers leading to mass extinctions and the anthropogenic increase in planetary temperatures leading to a diversity of consequences across the worlds environments.

The current generation is at risk of destroying the world for those future generations that come after us. We therefore wish to shape our philosophies and  SR philosophies towards sustainable practices that encourage global  improvements in biodiversity, in the reduction of anthropogenic carbon footprint and in the generation of circular sustainable outcomes including the production of  greener energy and mobility.

We intend to grow our mandate in tandem with the policy outputs of several global initiatives and Non-governmental organisations.

Capitalist societies in particular, encourage a societal norm that drives for self-actualization. But unfortunately, this can leave many people behind through a lack of awareness and access to opportunity through limitations often present since birth.

The Change is focused on developing opportunities for all, including opportunities for the world’s most underprivileged. There has been a massive opportunity for digital education in what has been a vacuum since before the pandemic.

There is also both an opportunity and a risk in connecting the next billion. We must ensure that this happens in a new way so as not to create a monoculture, thus losing to the history of anthropology the richness of culture that can be found in a disassociated environment. The benefits of our global society can be brought to those in need while focusing on leaving a diverse and multi-cultural outcome.

Poverty comes in many forms, and as can be seen through the global happiness index, many of the wealthiest in society can feel isolated, excluded and fundamentally unhappy. It is core that we remain conscious that there is a poverty of wellbeing in many of those engaged in today’s consumerist society and corporate ladder.

The Change aims to educate the most discriminated against those who are marginalized and underprivileged from birth and those in a position, whether through the presence of disability visible or otherwise, and expand to explore how the neurodiverse are potentially underrepresented.

We see opportunities for improvement in the lives of many who perhaps lack the basics such as a guardian, healthcare, education, technology, or access to resources as a primary reason for exclusion.

Issues around wellbeing are complex, from rare diseases to Cancer and mental health issues. Yet, diagnosis and treatment have been mainly restricted to traditional primary and secondary care within the developed world while at heart, people exist with a certain degree of wellness and constantly change from feeling “up” or “down,” regardless of whether they have a diagnosed health condition or not.

Awareness and access to diagnosis are highly variable across the world, as is the treatment offered as an intervention. It is not untrue to argue that regardless of the positive intent with which interventions are administrated, even certified medicines can affect individuals in profound and diverse ways.

The Change explores alternative views on health and wellbeing and aims to identify the root cause of healthcare problems within society and how they are best dealt with.

The global pandemic has shown us that health should be foremost in our minds as it is not just our health that matters but that of broader society, including the most vulnerable among us. However, even those who feel robust can be challenged by life events and the constant change we experience in society, which is not always welcome.

We will guide our investments in health in areas that can make a real impact on treatments of diagnosed conditions together with efforts to improve the happiness of those that access our science and technologies.

SDG Goal 1: Stop Poverty

Globally, the number of people living in extreme poverty declined from 36 per cent in 1990 to 10 per cent in 2015. But the pace of change is decelerating and the COVID-19 crisis risks reversing decades of progress in the fight against poverty. New research published by the UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research warns that the economic fallout from the global pandemic could increase global poverty by as much as half a billion people, or 8% of the total human population. This would be the first time that poverty has increased globally in thirty years, since 1990.

More than 700 million people, or 10 per cent of the world population, still live in extreme poverty today, struggling to fulfil the most basic needs like health, education, and access to water and sanitation, to name a few. The majority of people living on less than $1.90 a day live in sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, the poverty rate in rural areas is 17.2% more than three times higher than in urban areas.

For those who work, having a job does not guarantee a decent living. In fact, 8 per cent of employed workers and their families worldwide lived in extreme poverty in 2018. One out of five children live in extreme poverty. Ensuring social protection for all children and other vulnerable groups is critical to reduce poverty.

Facts and Figures

According to the most recent estimates, in 2015, 10 percent of the world’s population or 734 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day.

Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are expected to see the largest increases in extreme poverty, with an additional 32 million and 26 million people, respectively, living below the international poverty line as a result of the pandemic.

The share of the world’s workers living in extreme poverty fell by half over the last decade: from 14.3 per cent in 2010 to 7.1 per cent in 2019.

Even before COVID-19, baseline projections suggested that 6% of the global population would still be living in extreme poverty in 2030, missing the target of ending poverty. The fallout from the pandemic threatens to push over 70 million people into extreme poverty.

One out of five children live in extreme poverty, and the negative effects of poverty and deprivation in the early years have ramifications that can last a lifetime.

In 2016, 55 per cent of the world’s population – about 4 billion people – did not benefit from any form of social protection.

Goals

1.1 By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day

1.2 By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions

1.3 Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable

1.4 By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance

1.5 By 2030, build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental shocks and disasters

1.A Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular least developed countries, to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions

1.B Create sound policy frameworks at the national, regional and international levels, based on pro-poor and gender sensitive development strategies, to support accelerated investment in poverty eradication actions.

Want to find out more about

Becoming an investee?

Simply sign up to our newsletter for more information

 
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.