Stop faking it, let’s make it
The idea “Fake it till you make it” can be quite useful for that initial confidence that we need when starting something new. But at some point we need to overcome it and start to make things for real. That is exactly how I feel about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): we have talked enough about it, it’s about time to create innovative and scalable solutions to solve the main challenges of our time.
For more than 5 years I worked in a Social Innovation Consultancy in Brazil using the Millennium Goals and more recently the SDGs as tools, helping big companies to see how these macro objectives could be connected to their business strategy. But many times it just felt like ticking a box: “our company has to put the SDG stamp on its Corporate Social Responsibility projects. What number/theme is the best fit?”.
Of course this is important, but I was always questioning myself: how do we make the SDG more tangible? How do we create solutions that truly address the contemporary challenges? My personal answer for that was simple: instead of advising big companies, I wanted to support impact businesses (that ones that committed in its core to positive social and environmental impacts combined with financial return) to thrive.
In January 2017, I moved to Maputo, Mozambique, where I’m working as a business development manager for a Waste Management and Recycling Company. Based on circular economy concepts, our focus is to maximize the sustainable treatment of the waste in the country through local development of recyclables’ value chains, infrastructure and employment. We also work with one of the most vulnerable groups of the society, waste pickers, to increase their income and quality of life. On a daily basis, I deal with the challenges of implementing this kind of business in a frontier market, in a country with the 181º HDI of the world and the 7th poorest economy.
I believe developing projects and raising finance to support impact businesses is the way to create solutions that are economically viable, environmentally correct and socially fair.
That’s why I’m so happy and grateful to be one of the talents select to UNLEASH Lab, in Denmark. For 10 days, I’ll have the change to interact and cocreate solutions to SDGs with 999 other people from all over the world.
My theme during the lab will be Sustainable Production & Consumption (SDG12). Let’s discuss circular economy, conscious capitalism, impact investing, waste management, consumption, blockchain and combine all this concepts, technologies and areas in solutions that can be implemented now. Can’t wait to stop writing this and be in Copenhagen! Let’s do it!
