Community Development Strategies

Global wealth has almost doubled since 1990, but nearly half the world's population subsists on less than US$ 2 per day. Poverty remains a major challenge to sustainable development, environmental security, global stability and a truly global market. The key to poverty alleviation is economic growth that is inclusive and reaches the majority of people. Improving the performance and sustainability of local entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which represent the backbone of global economic activity, can help achieve this type of growth. The Issue Brief includes a set of key messages to both business and governments on promoting the growth of SMEs.

This report explores four key strategies companies can us to expand economic opportunity: 1) creating inclusive business models; 2) developing human capital; 3) building institutional capacity; and 4) helping to optimize the "Rules of the Game."

Social investment (SI) programmes are defined as the voluntary contributions companies make to the communities and broader societies where they operate, with the objective of benefiting external stakeholders, typically through the transfer of skills or resources. This guidance document aims to address the question of how to create successful and sustainable community investments and how to measure their success.

This study explores how communities and companies can engage in co-planning and monitoring to ensure sustainable local development benefits from the extraction of resources. Within the context of a spectrum of participation a variety of tools and mechanisms are presented in the paper. Some of these tools have been used primarily in the public sector, however companies stand to benefit from the tools in forms that are adapted to context, as they are potential vehicles to increase transparency, and thus accountability of companies, communities and governments.

Improving the management of the social and economic impacts of significant mining and industrial operations has become an increasingly important public policy issue in recent years. It is a critical element in the sustainable development agenda. This manual provides a process designed to assist Extractive Industry operations to identify and manage their social and economic impacts (both positive and negative). It also provides guidance on how to improve overall social performance where this is necessary.

BSR and First Peoples Worldwide (FPW) partnered recently to present a lively, practically focused training on how companies operating in areas inhabited by Indigenous peoples can practice engagement in ways that benefit both companies and communities.

The training focused on gaining a social license to operate, underscoring how companies that do not directly and skillfully address social issues risk losing access to the resources that are fundamental to their businesses. Simultaneously, the training looked at how Indigenous communities are attempting to identify how they might engage with companies to increase their own peoples’ well being, and begin constructive dialogue with companies to foster mutually beneficial relationships.

This guide will explain the variety of investments you can make with a Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). They range from savings accounts at a community development bank to unsecured term investments in a community development loan fund or a microfinance institution.

Crossing Borders brings business leaders face-to-face with local communities to listen and learn about how business impacts on, and interacts with, the local communities where they operate. The aim of the initiative is to highlight how business practices contribute to local development solutions and how business can grow more sustainably through profitable and successful partnerships with communities.

The Global Reporting Initiative “G3” Guidelines for Sustainability Reporting were released in October 2006 following several year’s ofresearch, development, and consensus-seeking by multi-stakeholder technical working groups, each assigned to focus on different parts of the Guidelines ending with a periodof public participation and comment.

The publication is divided into three sections. The first contains those resources of most practical use to companies, e.g., checklists and guides. The second section contains codes, standards and guidelines developed by international agencies (some of these are specific to the mineral industry; others are of more general application). The third section comprises background material that provides the context for sustainable development and CSR.

The Whitehorse Mining Initiative Leadership Council Accord establishes a set of principles and goals that are designed to act as a strategic vision and framework for decisionmaking in the Canadian mining sector.

Too often, mining companies want to discuss sustainability only in terms of how to mine, not whether to mine. For any sustainability policy to be complete it must address the issues of where and when it is appropriate or not to mine.