Background UNDP’s Growing Sustainable Business initiative (GSB) facilitates business led enterprise solutions to poverty in advancement of the Millennium Development Goals. The GSB initiative brokers pro-poor investments that accelerate and sustain access by the low-income and socially excluded populations, to affordable goods and services, and to employment and livelihood opportunities (through job creation and small enterprise development, including through value chain integration). GSB investment projects align commercial benefits of investors with local development needs and are carried out through multi-stakeholder partnerships. GSB has established local programs in over 15 countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. There are over 50 projects in the GSB global portfolio distributed mainly among the agriculture, energy, financial services and ICT sectors. GSB Programme Components GSB is uniquely positioned to leverage UNDP local expertise, neutrality and convening power to facilitate pro-poor investments. Establishing a local GSB programme in a country entails engaging all relevant stakeholders in government, private sector, civil society, and development partners including the UN. Once established in a country, the GSB initiative involves the following components: a full time GSB broker, a research and technical assistance platform, and multi-stakeholder oversight.
A full time GSB broker: A full-time GSB Broker is recruited to act as a convener and intermediary for business, government, civil society, and development partners. The GSB broker helps identify, develop and support specific pro-poor investment projects, leveraging UNDP’s impartiality and convening power. The broker also plays a key role in problem solving and technical assistance for GSB projects.
Research Platform: GSB can provide co-funding for socio-economic research and feasibility studies. The findings of such research are publicly available so to further increase knowledge among government, donors and other interested stakeholders, potentially sparking further investments.
Technical Assistance Platform: GSB helps build needed capacity of local stakeholders, in particular local entrepreneurs, local government and local NGOs that might be expected to play a role in the implementation of any given GSB project.
Multi-stakeholder oversight: In every country, a Coordinating Group is created. Its role is to oversee and support the efforts of the GSB in a country. It is comprised of GSB stakeholders, including government, private sector companies, civil society, and development partners including the UN. The purpose of this project is to implement the GSB programme in Serbia and Turkey.
|
.gif)
