Accelerator to build on CARE programs, partnerships with Social Enterprise Community to scale up resilient humanitarian responses to climate change.
New York., September 18, 2023– Today, CARE announced the launch of the CARE Climate Solution Accelerator (CCSA), in response to the escalating social and economic impacts of the climate crisis and their disproportionate impacts on women and girls.
Speaking at the Annual Climate Week, Meagan Fallone, CARE’s Executive Adviser of Climate Justice and inaugural Entrepreneur-in-Residence, noted that the new Accelerator will serve as an incubator for strategic partnerships with the Social Enterprise community to amplify, expand and scale climate solutions from within CARE’s programmatic offerings.
“Our civil society and NGO organizations must help to drive a new kind of economy – one that takes into account the development and humanitarian impacts of climate change,” said Fallone, who will also helm the new Accelerator.
“That is the goal of the CCSA – working to evolve programs that address things like a lack of Gender Equity or equal access to capital when exploring solutions to climate change. We want to create a community of action focused on sustained innovation and coordination by key stakeholders to achieve real, equitable and systemic change at scale. Our hope is that through the CCSA, 10 million women will increase their income, productivity, resilience, and ability to adapt to a changing climate.”
“Specifically, we have identified considerable opportunity in the global south to mobilize women around the green economy through nature-based solutions. Our target in the first year of the accelerator will be to reach half a million women with green-focused skills and capacity building.”
Fallone added that CARE will leverage its highly successful Farmers Field and Business School to Enable more than 500,000 women small-scale farmers, fisherfolk and pastoralists with regenerative climate practices and provide access to a new digital content library of educational materials on climate-smart agriculture and eco-business practices.
Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, and founder of “the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice,” welcomed news of the CCSA launch.
“CARE is giving real leadership in being the first major NGO to adopt a climate solution accelerator. Every civil society organization needs to step up in this way to address the climate and nature crisis as a crisis. We look forward to working with Meagan and CARE on this important work.”
Meanwhile, Halla Tómasdóttir, CEO of The B Team – a global nonprofit initiative co-founded by Sir Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz to advocate for climate and human-centered business practices – applauded CARE’s collective and collaborative approach to addressing the climate crisis.
“This decade demands courageous leadership that is inclusive, transparent and boldly collaborative — from everyone. CARE’s pioneering climate solution accelerator is a fantastic example of what can be achieved when we come together to tackle our shared challenges,” said Tómasdóttir.
The launch of the Accelerator comes on the heels of a report released by the Expert Group on Climate and SDG Synergy – a group of 14 renowned experts, including CARE’s Meagan Fallone, tasked by the United Nations to “provide a comprehensive assessment, guidance, and practical framework to advance synergistic action between climate and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
The report revealed that “halfway to the deadline for the 2030 Agenda we are leaving more than half the world behind. Progress on more than 50 percent of targets of the SDGs is weak and insufficient; on 30 percent, it has stalled or gone into reverse. These include key targets on poverty, hunger and climate. Unless we act now, the 2030 Agenda could become an epitaph for a world that might have been.”
Michelle Nunn, President, and CEO of CARE USA described the new Accelerator as part of CARE’s rapid and ongoing evolution as fit-for-purpose organization working to address inequality, poverty, and injustice.
“Addressing climate change is a matter of life and death for millions of people today- not in the future. We have the capacity to equip those who have been most directly impacted by climate change to withstand its impacts. We want to use CARE’s scale and network of millions of women grassroots community members, coupled with innovative new tools and financing to build resilience and adaptive capacities for climate equity,” said Nunn.
For media inquiries, please contact: Anisa Husain, CARE US Press Officer via: anisa.husain@care.org