Sustainability has become a very common and broad term nowadays. In my opinion the focus in Holland lays too much on the environmental aspects. But what about humanity? I understand that it seems to be more beneficial to invest for example in solar panels, fuel efficient motors etc. than to invest in poverty.  Off course we also need to protect our environment otherwise it would be hard for humanity to survive. Until recently it was quite normal to assume that our governments and NGO’s like Unicef and Oxfam Novib are taking care of the problem. Several cases and studies however have shown that development aid (our tax money)/donations do not reduce poverty. The lack of transparency with a number of NGO’s does not help either.

In this post I want to share two successful examples where Dutch organisations focus through co-creation on both environmental and especially human aspects of sustainability. I really believe that these are better alternatives than developement aid and donations to old-fashioned organisations. It may seem small scaled, but looking at the overall process the effect and involvement seems high.

Enviu  (www.enviu.org)
This organisation, located in Rotterdam, communicate that they are innovators in sustainability. Their core business is to develop sustainable and social innovations and bringing them to the market. They work together with a large group of young entrepreneurial people, senior executives, corporate partners and universities to co-create these innovative businesses.
Below you can find a video which explains what Enviu is and does, aslo take a look at the WOW projects on the website (Dutch & English). Quite interesting…

1%club (www.onepercentclub.com)
They named themselves one percent club with the idea that if everyone spends one percent of their income, time and/or knowledge on poverty, we can resolve this problem structurally.
Last year I had the pleasure to meet the one of the founders of this organisation. It was inspiring to hear about their ideas and growth. At first the 1% projects  page on the website might give you a standard donation impression, but if you click on one of the projects you can see the level of involvement and how many people support ideas like this. The organisation also supports you if you want start your own project.  Take a look at the video.

As you may have noticed while reading my post, I really like to put my time and effort in this field. Empowering people to obtain mental and financial self-reliance in less developed areas is something that appeals to me. That is why I joined CrossBorderRelations (www.crossborderrelations.org). Currently we are starting up again and discussing our plans with parties like organisations as I mentioned above. If you are interested, take a look at our website and contact me. We could really use your help!

Rajiv Hanoeman