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“The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.”
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)
Our work is never finite—we strive to create lasting effects. Fixing on the long-term progress and well-being of our beneficiaries motivates us to achieve true development. And our beneficiaries are our partners, identifying challenges and priorities and working with us to address them.
Strengthening Value Chains for Long-term Impact
Our pioneering work in developing a comprehensive value chain approach to economic development (with attendant poverty reduction) exemplifies our commitment to technical practices that elevate and extend our impact beyond the duration of a project. A strengthened value chain carries long-term benefit for many actors.
Involving Communities to Drive Change
We have been leaders in community-driven development that brings together participants from across religious, ethnic and gender barriers to discover mutuality and to partner in progressive action, a basic building-block of sustainability.
Improving Agricultural Systems from Farm to Market
And a persistent food crisis in many parts of the world reaffirms our historical emphasis on catalyzing systemic agricultural development to achieve far-reaching food production gains and overcome the need for commodity handouts.
Promoting Climate-Smart Agriculture
Environmental shocks—including natural disasters, decreased harvests, rising food prices, food shortages and changing weather patterns—are keenly felt in the developing world, where often they are least able to deal with new challenges.
We take a holistic approach to addressing climate change in our programs with a focus on minimizing vulnerability and exposure, and maximizing communities’ ability to adapt, so that interventions are sustainable in the long run.
Nurturing Change Agents
We provide knowledge, opportunities and choices to our beneficiaries so that they themselves become agents of development. By taking responsibility for what happens after our projects end, unleashing the self-interest and potential of many who take on that same responsibility and tailoring solutions to each environment in which we work, we give our work salience, make it signify and ensure that it lasts.
Our values statement reads: “Our respect for host societies and our commitment to the involvement of beneficiaries as true partners in development projects result in improved local capacities, enhanced opportunities, and vibrant, sustainable communities, cooperatives and enterprises….To maximize the effective use of public resources and sustainable impact, we favor expandable, replicable methods, local ownership, an emphasis on broad-based participation and alliances with the private sector and other partners.”
Investing in Youth for Building Tomorrow's Future
A particular key to sustainability is investing directly in future generations through youth capacity building, including leadership and entrepreneurship. Youth development has been a key component under many projects.
Visit our cross-cutting page on youth to learn more.
Creating and Supporting Legacy Organizations to be Self-Sustaining
Another measure of sustainability is our success in leaving behind a legacy of effective, self-sustaining organizations that offer real-world social, business and finance solutions.
Visit some of our successor groups.
