SSIR Online, Spring 2022 Issue

In the aftermath of a drought in North Horr, Kenya, people who are unbanked and without credit like Arbay, above, have been forced to sell their livestock to buy food. (Photo courtesy of UNICEF/UN0123957/Knowles-Coursin) 

Blockchain for Good

Online: Working Toward Financial Inclusion With Blockchain

Blockchain technology is redefining the role of banks, governments, and corporations by enabling financial transactions that can be more secure, cheaper, and more efficient than traditional alternatives. For years, its potential for improving global financial inclusion has been mostly theoretical, but it is now starting to show early results in tackling humanitarian problems. This article from Cecilia Chapiro, investment lead at UNICEF’s Innovation Fund, highlights four ways blockchain is beginning to help people in countries such as Kenya and Argentina build more resilient and prosperous lives through greater access to financial services.

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Hard Work

In-Depth Series: Collective Impact, 10 Years Later

The feature article “Centering Equity in Collective Impact” in our Winter 2022 issue marks the 10th anniversary of the SSIR article that first popularized the framework. In a series of subsequent articles published online, those authors and others reflect further on what they’ve learned over a decade of practice about how “to design and implement cross-sector collaborations that focus on equity, community engagement, and power sharing in order to contribute to positive results and justice in their work.” They also share some experiences of what doesn’t work, because, as Collective Impact Forum senior advisor Paul Schmitz writes, “Collective impact is really, really hard.”

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Unprecedented Challenges

Podcast: Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders

Political polarization. Climate change. A racial reckoning. Income inequality. The global pandemic. These challenges are vying for the attention of leaders and organizations across the country. In this limited-run podcast series, produced in partnership with The Pew Charitable Trusts, leaders from across the social sector share approaches and case studies of innovation and resilience during these trying times.

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(Photo by iStock/akinbostanci)  

Onward and Upward

Online: Overcoming Racial Equity Fatigue

Writer and consultant Benjamin Abtan identified a common problem within organizations nearly two years after the racial justice protests of 2020: what he terms “racial equity fatigue.” How can individuals push past their frustration that progress is slow or that their investments in time and resources haven’t paid off in tangible gains? To start, Abtan suggests, “decenter yourself. Remember that you are taking part in a centuries-old struggle that has involved countless individuals, from Native Americans resisting extermination to enslaved Africans revolting for freedom, hundreds of thousands of people who marched in the civil rights movement, and today’s social justice activists. The efforts to dismantle racism have started well before you, and will continue well after you.”

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(Photo by John Myers) 

Credits Where Credits Are Due

Online: How Carbon Offsetting Can Build a Forest

REDD+ is the United Nations-backed framework that aims to curb climate change and halt deforestation by putting carbon credits in the hands of forest-dependent Indigenous communities. To see what this cooperation among governments, the corporate sector, and Indigenous communities looks like on the ground, John Edward Myers, María Ángelica Parra, and Charles Bedford visited Colombia’s Selva de Matavén Unified Indigenous Reserve, where carbon credits are financing programs for potable water, food security, education, solar power, and transportation. Against the charge that these deforestation projects can be greenwashing, the authors urge the need to detoxify the debate through better accountability standards: It will be easier to work together in good faith toward a common goal with clearer and more enforceable offset standards.

Read more stories by SSIR Editors.