The number of people living under the absolute poverty line of 1, 25 dollar per day is decreasing. That is the good news. But almost 1 billion people live still in extreme poverty and hunger. 2 billion people experience malnutrition. Moreover the gap between rich and poor is growing. Many people, and young people not in the least, are excluded from economic and social opportunities. Their basic human rights are denied.
They believe a world with less poverty is possible. To achieve this they embrace two core principles:
These principles are interrelated and explained in our strategy paper 'Towards a Just and Dignified World'. A livelihood without rights is not sustainable and dignity comes with a livelihood in which rights are respected. The core values of ICCO are compassion, justice and stewardship, expressions of our Christian roots.
They keep our eyes and ears close to the ground as a partner to enterprising peoplewith a worldwide local network and a strong belief in the power of people to improve their livelihoods.
Securing sustainable livelihoods
ICCO gives people the opportunity to link up to viable and sustainable agribusiness value chains, acquire income and produce sufficient and quality food for a balanced diet. They connect organizations and investors, and develop skills to enhance farmers’ livelihoods. They also support organizations that help farmers obtain land titles, and they work with private sector businesses that purchase produce, set quality standards and strengthen producer organizations.
There is not a one-off solution to end poverty and injustice. Also there are no quick fixes either. From more than 50 years of experience they know that multistakeholder and public private partnerships help a lot to achieve success. Therefore they facilitate, implement and invest in development programs in collaborations between civil society organizations, (social) enterprises and governments. They believe strong in deploying joint innovative capacities.
Blending for development
Many of our programs are characterized by a blended approach. They apply and combine funding sources, different financing instruments and business entities from the ICCO Group. In this they accept a certain measure of risk-taking by combining grant based co-financing with non-grant based funding mechanisms like loans, equity and impact investments. The graphic below shows the use of our technical and market services and products in the context of smallholders farmers and businesses.
Sustainable Development Goals
They endeavor to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are seen as the most important global agreements to improve people's lives which require full commitment of governments, the private sector and non-governmental organizations. There are 17 SDGs that relate to people, planet, and profit. The ICCO themes cover several SDGs. To measure our impact they have established programs indicators that correspond to the SDGs indicators 1, 2, 8 and 16.
