I’ve written about the business case for empowering women producers before; but the financial justification for inclusive business goes much further than that. Today, CARE International published “A Different Cup of Tea: The Business Case for Empowering Workers in the Sri Lankan Tea Sector” which demonstrates that companies investing in one worker empowerment model, the Community Development Forum (CDF), gained $26 for every $1 invested.
Twenty-three tea estates partnering with CARE International Sri Lanka have successfully implemented CDFs, which are ‘mini-parliaments’ that facilitate dialogue between workers, management and the broader community. The model opens up new channels of communication between stakeholders across the plantation region, serving as a forum where collective decisions about community development priorities and labour conditions are negotiated and decided in a transparent way. An independent assessment by the New Economics Foundation showed that that there was a 1:26 return on investment for estates, plus additional gains for workers and the community.
That’s a fairly impressive return, but where does the figure come from?
This blog was originally published by CARE International UK. For the full article and business case, please visit insights.careinternational.org.uk
Alexa Roscoe 