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2.0 Introduction: Enterprise solutions to poverty

Written by: Shell Foundation

Article Overview: This paper has two objectives. The first is to introduce the Shell Foundation and its way of working. The second is to offer up insights drawn from our experience as a contribution to the wider debate on how the private sector and the International Development Community (IDC) can most effectively catalyse equitable, self-sustaining development in poor countries (see annex 1).

2.0 Introduction: Enterprise solutions to poverty

This paper has two objectives. The first is to
introduce the Shell Foundation and its way of
working. The second is to offer up insights drawn
from our experience as a contribution to the wider
debate on how the private sector and the International
Development Community (IDC) can
most effectively catalyse equitable, self-sustaining
development in poor countries (see annex 1).

The Shell Foundation is new – established by
Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies as a UK
charity in June 2000 – and a little different. Unlike
many corporate foundations, the Shell Foundation
focuses on social issues aligned to the core
characteristics of our founder – an energy major
and a multinational group of companies (MNC).
Thus we address social problems arising from the
links between energy and poverty, energy and the
environment and the impact of globalisation on
vulnerable communities.

In addition, while set up as a grant-making charity,
the Shell Foundation believes the application of
business principles and business thinking can be
very useful in tackling social problems, especially
the challenges of overcoming poverty in developing
countries. Hence we tend to act more like an
investor in deciding where and how to allocate our
commitments of time and money. We also expect
our partners to act more like entrepreneurs and
businesses in the pursuit of their social and
charitable objectives.

Finally, and because of our focus on energy issues,
we’re exploring ways of harnessing what we call the
‘value-creating’ assets of one of the largest international
energy majors, the Shell Group, to advance
our charitable objectives. We could not do this if
our issues were traditional corporate philanthropy
concerns of health, education or culture.

Moreover, because the Shell Group has long been
present in many developing countries, we have
ready access to practical experience and ‘local’
knowledge on enterprise–poverty issues simply not
available to the majority of IDC actors – donors in
particular. Taken together this means we are able to
bring ‘more than money’ to the table when seeking
strategic partners and working with them to
develop and implement viable, scalable solutions to
the social problems we target.

Of course, the Shell Foundation is still young and
our track record relatively limited. However, our
work to date tackling poverty in developing
countries is throwing up intriguing challenges –
not only for the Foundation Board and its staff,1
our founders, the Royal Dutch/Shell and our
partners – but more widely for practitioners
concerned with international development and
corporate social responsibility (CSR).

In Section 1 we set the stage for exploring these
challenges by reinforcing a case for putting ‘propoor
enterprise’ more at the heart of the efforts
by the IDC and big business to help poor people
escape poverty (see annex 1). In Section 2, we
describe the core features of the approach taken by
Shell Foundation to pursue this goal. Section 3
uses case study material to illustrate our way of
working and the outcomes being achieved. Finally,
in Section 4, we distil our experience into a set of
propositions for wider debate and consideration by
the international development and business
communities.

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Article Tags: charitable objectives, corporate social responsibility, energy and the environment, Foundation Board, international development, Royal Dutch Shell, Royal Dutch Shell Group of Companies, Shell Foundation, Shell Group, social issues, social problems, the International Development Community IDC



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