North America 2023

Highlights

In 2023, revenue in North America increased by over 125 percent, moving from 2.6 million euros in 2022 to 5.8 million euros in 2023, while significantly reducing financial dependence on other Solidaridad entities.
In a breakthrough year, Solidaridad North America secured contracts and implemented projects with four of the largest donors globally, including USAID, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Walmart Foundation, and Cargill.
High profile speaking engagements at OECD and Climate Week NY, as well as the presentation of the Small Farmer Atlas and the impact platform PING at USAID, enhanced Solidaridad’s visibility and reputation as an innovator and leader in the complex arena of climate change solutions and the first mile of supply chain sustainability.

Jeremias Gomez Repero, coffee farmer in Colombia

A COFFEE FARMER ADAPTING HIS FARM TO CONSERVE & PROVIDE

Don Jeremías Gomez Repero was raised on a small family farm in Colombia. Today, he and his family are learning how better farming practices can reduce emissions, protect biodiversity through Amazonia Connect.

Read his story

EXPANDING THE REACH OF DIGITAL SERVICES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

Kvuno is a decentralized digital service model incubated by Solidaridad to lower the cost of providing last-mile services to smallholder farmers in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia. The company received a boost with a USD 1.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of the Smart Farming Innovations for Small-Scale Producers Grand Challenge.

ROLLING OUT AMAZONIA CONNECT: A 5-YEAR EFFORT TO SCALE LOW-CARBON AGRICULTURE & CONSERVATION

The Amazonia Connect initiative is a five-year effort to implement low-carbon agriculture and preserve biodiversity in Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Our 4-film series shows the impact we strive for.

Watch the films here

University of California Berkeley Alumni of the Year

Madhyama Subramanian, Head of Programs and Partnerships in the North America team, received the 2023 Alumni of the Year award from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.

Fundraising, Partnerships & Engagement

The North America team carried out a wide range of activities, from rolling out partnerships and projects, strengthening the implementation of ongoing projects, developing new innovations, and cultivating new partnerships with donors and stakeholders to advance impact.

In Amazonia Connect’s first full year of implementation, the North America team worked closely with the consortium, laying the groundwork to scale up low-emission commodity production that builds community resilience and conservation across the three Amazon basin countries of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.

The collaboration of teams from Solidaridad, Earth Innovation Institute, the National Wildlife Federation and University of Wisconsin-Madison led to the implementation of low-carbon agriculture practices on on 32,550 hectares of land, while 5 private sector enterprises across the three countries were engaged to improve monitoring for deforestation and biodiversity risks in their supply chains. 12 governmental agencies & 1 multi-stakeholder body were engaged in capacity building to implement local and regional strategies that support low-emission rural development. $3.4 million USD of finance for low-carbon agriculture and deforestation-free production were also mobilized in Peru through public investment programs. Three research reports on deforestation, biodiversity & cattle supply sheds were developed which are being used to inform the private sector and policy influencing activities. Read more about Amazonia Connect here.

The Solidaridad teams in North America and Southern Africa completed the first year of the project supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that focuses on strengthening and scaling Kvuno, a social enterprise that aims at delivering low-cost, high-impact, digitally-driven bundled services to small farmers in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia.

Together with the project’s partners Cropin, OKO, HarvestPlus, Bopinc, and Lean Institute Africa, and in consultation with experts from the foundation, the Kvuno team made several advancements to onboard nearly 16,000 farmers onto its digital platform and strengthen its network of hubs and field agents to deliver key farming services such as soil testing, seed multiplication, and developing systematic data records related to their farming activities. The team also worked on expanding its range of service offerings to include insurance, access to finance, and targeted crop health advisory, along with improving its operational efficiency and refining its business model. Read more about the programme here.

In July 2023, Cargill and Solidaridad announced a strategic global partnership that includes three thematic areas, climate, land use and farmer livelihoods, and will reach 2,000 farmers in Latin America and Asia. The initial program will include producers of soybeans and palm oil across five countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Malaysia and Paraguay. Interventions will include training in good agricultural practices, support for farmers to achieve sustainability certifications, improved productivity and market access, and responsible land and water use.

The 3-year, USD$4.6 million program marks a new level of collaboration between the organizations. Cargill and Solidaridad have worked together for over a decade at a regional and local level to advance sustainable practices and partner with farmers to improve livelihoods while conserving natural resources. This new global partnership will be rooted in common goals across all regions, allowing more resources to be dedicated to program work with farmers. Read more about the Cargill partnership here.

Solidaridad received a 1 million USD grant from the Walmart Foundation to support the implementation of a jurisdictional initiative focused on beef in the municipality of Campo Aceval in the Paraguayan Chaco. The grant supports the formation of a local multi-stakeholder initiative that aims to identify and act on sustainability priorities identified by local stakeholders.

Conservation and sustainability efforts are often sector-specific and occur at the farm level. A jurisdictional landscape approach goes beyond farm-level interventions to consider the local landscape and geographic boundaries established by governments in defining the scope of action and the actors involved. These efforts on the subnational level can ultimately produce more effective long-term outcomes grounded in local needs that consider the interests of people and nature.

Solidaridad will work with local farmers to develop 15 demonstration farms and train over 200 farmers in silvopastoral and sustainable management practices. The program will support sustainable livelihoods in two indigenous communities and aims to establish 10,000 ha under conservation, 1,500 ha under restoration, and 5,000 ha under sustainable management. Read more here.

Solidaridad and partners were awarded the Challenging Corruption project, one of the winners of the Powering a Just Energy Transition Green Minerals Challenge (JET Minerals Challenge). The JET Minerals Challenge is run by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Challenging Corruption project will make informal payments in the small-scale cobalt supply chain in the DRC more visible and support civil society to monitor corruption more effectively in the sector. Solidaridad will explore how downstream buyers in the cobalt supply chain can lower the risk of corruption in the DRC. Other implementing partners include Canadian CSO IMPACT, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in DRC (EITI-DRC), and the technology company Minespider.

Solidaridad North America secured a new, two-year project that focuses on enabling gold traders to build and sustain a responsible artisanal gold sector in Côte d’Ivoire. Solidaridad’s role will be to understand what might incentivize and motivate miners and traders to enter into formal, responsible gold production and trade. Solidaridad is a partner with Canadian non-profit organization IMPACT, plus COOPEDA, a mining cooperative, and SICOM, a gold exporter, in Côte d’Ivoire.

Sustainability Solutions

Gender
In close collaboration with the teams in Latin America and Southern Africa, the North America team contributed to the development of gender assessments and resulting gender inclusivity strategies for the Amazonia Connect project and Kvuno, the digitally-driven service provision model incubated by Solidaridad in Southern Africa.

Climate & Locally-Led Adaptation
North America’s Climate Change and Green Growth Specialist supports the Climate Change and Natural Resource Management Thematic Learning Group, focusing on Locally-Led Adaptation (LLA) and climate finance. Through this work we are participating in the Global Community of Practice for LLA, along with other organizations who have endorsed the 8 principles of LLA. Our specialist also participates in the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) community of practice within Solidaridad, with a strong focus on the climate-gender nexus. Supporting Solidaridad’s Payment for Ecosystem Service (PES) Unit, the NAM team participates in the PES Steering Committee and is working with the team on fundraising efforts to scale climate action through PES.

Organizational Results & Development

As a 501(c)3 registered in California focused on delivering fundraising, technical support and partner and project management services to our colleagues and partners globally, the North American team works remotely across the United States and Canada, optimizing access to partners, donors and events in the region.

Leadership

In November 2023, we welcomed Barbara Stinson to our Continental Supervisory Board, bringing deep insight on the North American donor market, and injecting energy and guidance into our growing funding and business development efforts. In January 2023, Managing Director Michaelyn Baur moved to a full time role, after wrapping up 11 years of leading the successful strategic development of Solidaridad’s Central America, Mexico and Caribbean region.

Human Resources

In 2023, Solidaridad North America mobilized additional communications and project coordination support through contractors, while maintaining a staff of 6.5 FTE. Prioritzing diversity and inclusion, we have made a commitment to have a minimum of 30 percent of our staff be from minority or underrepresented groups, which has been achieved within our current staff structure & will be emphasized in our growth targets. Additional support is secured through part-time consultants, interns, membership with Connective Impact, and Bid Boss, a consulting firm providing strategic financial management support for Amazonia Connect and other US Government grants.. Legal support is provided by TrustLaw, Mintz, and audit support by Baker Tilly.

As contracts in the pipeline are secured, we envision increasing staff to balance project management roles with fundraising goals, as the current rate of proposals won and subsequent project management time of the team is reducing the fundraising and business development efforts.

The team continues to optimize the use of our internal data and financial system Plaza for agile proposal development and project management.

Communications

In 2023, the bulk of communications from North America focused on successful implementation of the communications strategy for Amazonia Connect, and guiding the development and launch of the Small Farmer Atlas. The Atlas, Cocoa Barometer, Coffee Barometer, Solidaridad’s climate work, and new partnerships were covered by various external media outlets in 2023, including the Guardian, Sustainable Brands, Food Tank, Confectionery News, Daily Coffee News, Barista Magazine, and Foodprint.

Amazonia Connect

The Amazonia Connect initiative was rolled out publicly on the Solidaridad website in English and Spanish. Over the course of the year, four globally relevant explainer pieces on Low Carbon Agriculture and Agroforestry, Traceability and Transparency, Carbon Credits and Carbon Markets for Smallholders, and Jurisdictional Approaches to improve Low-Emission Rural Development provided context for the key aims of the intiative, and a series of short videos were developed in English, Spanish, and Portuguese explaining the project’s goals and activities in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.

Small Farmer Atlas

Solidaridad North America played a critical role in delivering the Small Farmer Atlas (www.smallfarmeratlas.info), a first-ever effort to delve into the perspectives and priorities of small-scale farmers and understand their perspectives on sustainability. The end result was a 108-page report (produced as a PDF and hardcover book), an interactive website, a data dashboard where users could explore the results in greater detail, and a campaign to roll out the report on a global scale.

Events

A 4-day Pause and Reflect Session in Lima helped the Amazonia Connect consortium celebrate successes and build momentum for the following year

The Amazonia Connect consortium held its first Pause and Reflect Session (PRS) in Lima in June 2023. The four-day long in-person workshop provided the consortium the opportunity to celebrate its successes from the first year, take stock of lessons learned, strengthen collaboration among consortium members, and consolidate implementation plans for the duration of the project. The consortium also organized their first project launch event in May 2023 in Colombia, followed by a learning event in November 2023 in Brazil.

Solidaridad North America also participated in two panels at Climate Week 2023 in New York City. One panel was hosted by the We Mean Business Coalition, and the other by Transform to Net Zero. The panels offered us the opportunity to talk about climate justice and a just transition, in particular the potential for small farmers and miners to contribute to achieving the Global Goals.

Solidaridad North America also organized a side session at the annual spring OECD Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains in Paris, the leading event globally for the responsible minerals space. Panel speakers discussed the importance of an incentives-based approach when asking actors in minerals supply chains – in particular small-scale miners – to improve their practices. An incentives-based approach rewards positive behavior rather than punishing less desirable behavior. The panel, which included representatives from Solidaridad, Canadian NGO IMPACT and Intel, was followed by a discussion with the at-capacity audience.

INTEGRITY

Annually, the North American team reviews and accepts Solidaridad’s global Code of Conduct and Whistleblower Protocols, as well as updates to our Human Resources and Financial Management Manuals. We practice transparency in all interactions / transactions, and address ethical management issues in our team calls to ensure accountability and sharpen our integrity programming. Due to our small team, we seek support from our colleagues globally to provide access to Integrity Advisors and Persons of Trust. In 2023, there were no integrity issues to report. In 2024, we plan to re-engage the entire team with integrity-related training based on our global policies and procedures in collaboration with Solidaridad Europe.

Inclusivity, especially gender, is one of the main cross cutting issues for sustainability in development. Solidaridad North America takes actions related to strengthening institutional capacities to incorporate inclusivity in current and future projects:

Be part of the Inclusivity Community of Practice (CoP) and participate in activities as planned, including an annual survey to measure institutional needs and commitments around inclusivity.

Provide orientation to staff members and colleagues to apply inclusivity in current and future projects.
Support our colleagues globally in the design and implementation of gender inclusivity analysis and reports at project / programme level to build robust baselines and impact measurement guidelines and tools for reporting, learning and continual improvement of gender – related programming.

Finance

The financial figures for Solidaridad North America have been restated for the global aggregated Solidaridad annual report to follow the principles of IFRS and to be consistent with the approach followed in other Solidaridad regions. These figures will differ from the US reporting which follows US GAAP and has a different approach to revenue recognition

All information above is pending the auditing process. The full audited annual statements of 2023 will be added as soon as they are available.

2023 ANNUAL REPORT

Global Annual Report 2023