While for years the finance sector seems to be detached from the real economy, attracting well-founded criticism, some structures are working to restore its role as a powerful lever for inclusion in the fight against poverty and climate change. This is the case of CERISE which, with the “LabODD” working group it leads, is seeking to propose solutions to integrate the SDGs into the measurement of organizations’ results, contributing to the collective efforts we are all making to build a 3Zero world.
CERISE is an association promoting responsible finance. It accompanies and collaborates with inclusive finance actors, social enterprises and social investors to collectively find solutions that enable impact organizations to achieve their social mission.
In October 2020, LabODD was launched. It is a working group organized to pilot the project “Make the SDGs a roadmap for impact!“, led by CERISE and co-financed by AFD. The framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was designed to serve as a common frame of reference for all actors of change, public, private or otherwise, in order to standardize and facilitate the reading of objectives and results in terms of sustainable development.
The members of LabODD work to strengthen the capacities of organizations to achieve a positive impact in the areas that concern them, by equipping them and accompanying them so that they adopt results-based management, in line with the SDGs. The LabODD aims to improve the collection, use and analysis of data by capitalizing on French and international expertise in order to guide decision-making, and facilitate the use of data to monitor the contribution to the SDGs. Data management is a major challenge: 90% of the data we have today was created in the last two years. This is why LabODD is working on clearly established and benchmarked outcome data as a basis for effective reporting and analysis.
Beyond the benefits of better knowledge and practice of the operational framework of the SDGs, this project also offers to focus on a wide range of sectors and approaches: inclusive finance, agriculture, energy, gender. Thus, the LabODD Energy Group focuses on organizations engaged in the energy access sector, thus contributing to the Zero Carbon goals. It questions current approaches and practices in the sector in terms of data collection, analysis and use of results, experiments in the field and shares these experiences with sector actors.
LabODD currently brings together 30 member organizations and their field partners (social enterprises, microfinance institutions). Through these activities over the next two years, the project will strengthen 40 profit for purpose organizations reaching nearly 4 million clients and beneficiaries in Africa (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Senegal, Togo) and Asia (India, Myanmar, Philippines, Cambodia).
Combining a diversity of intervention areas, actors and themes, LabODD contributes concretely and through collective action to the objectives of inclusion, fight against poverty and global warming that the 3Zero promotes.
LabODD in a few figures
30 profit for purpose organizations members
40+ profit for purpose organizations strengthened in Africa and Asia
4 millions beneficiaries worldwide
1 pilote tool to measure the contribution of profit for purpose organizations to the SDGs (MetODD-SDG)
