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2022 ANNUAL REPORT

Global Annual Report 2022

Europe 2022

31 December 2022

Europe is highly dependent on trade for its daily needs. Europe is supplied by billions of small farmers, miners and workers in agricultural, industrial and services sectors elsewhere. European companies and governments show little interest in defending the rights of stakeholders outside Europe. Solidaridad tries to make small farmers’ and workers’ voices from across the globe heard in Europe.

Heske Verburg signs at Solidaridad's Signastore

Highlights

Farmer representatives Napolean Ningkos, - representing 40,000 indigenous small farmers of Sarawak Malaysiato,- and Pedro Marenja, - who represents 250,000 cotton farming families across Mozambique

Support Inclusive European Legislation

In 2022, Solidaridad Europe helped to put in place  regulatory frameworks and supporting policies to ensure products sold at the European market are produced in a sustainable way.

PlusPlus-Kate-Okyeso_ Nyame Ne Wo Company. Cocoa, MASO, Ghana © Chikis Studios

Create Impactful Corporate Partnerships

As a result of our work, 51 partners have improved their sustainability policies or practices.

Heske Verburg signs at Solidaridad's Signastore

Activate European citizens to demand an economy that works for everybody

We activated 173 thousand citizens to demand an economy in which goods originating from the Global South are produced sustainably.

Collaborating with donors

We have been able to achieve this, thanks to our donors, particularly the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who contributed all together over 38 million euros income for Solidaridad Europe in 2022.

Results

51

companies improved their sustainability policies and practices

2

Regulatory frameworks in place in Europe

173,000

citizens mobilized to demand a sustainable economy

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Front of the Solidaridad signastore

Developing mutually beneficial partnerships

Our impact in 2022

Solidaridad Europe generates support and commitments for making international value chains more sustainable, with a focus on improving the livelihoods of farmers, miners and workers in producing countries beyond Europe’s borders. Developing mutually beneficial partnerships is the single most important aspect of our work in Europe. As such, we partner with hundreds of players across global value chains, from donors and companies to knowledge institutes and civil society organizations. With offices in the Netherlands and Germany and partnerships in various European countries, there are ample opportunities for us to explore.

Supporting the inclusion of small farmers in European legislation

The Policy Influencing team is advocating for the adoption of international supply chain legislation that will have a positive impact on smallholder farmers, workers, miners, and the environment. In 2022 the European Union took several important steps in the process of adopting legislation, and several of our recommendations on smallholder inclusiveness, and on partnerships between the EU and producing countries were included.

In 2022, we focused on driving more ambitious due diligence legislation in the European Union, particularly through the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) proposal and the Deforestation Regulation. In our European advocacy we work with partners including Fair Trade Advocacy Office, Fairtrade International, Fern, Rainforest Alliance, and Tropenbos International. In cooperation with these partners, we held meetings with decision-makers, sent letters, developed position papers, formulated recommendations and amendments, and generated media attention. Our work also included a role in the EU Cocoa Coalition, where we worked with companies including Nestlé, Mars, and Mondelez, as well as CSOs to share joint recommendations. Furthermore, we collaborated with MVO Platform and MVO Nederland, with the aim of influencing policies and legislation in the Netherlands.

Value chain partnerships for sustainable production

Solidaridad in Europe aims to build and maintain impactful partnerships with the private sector to create inclusive and sustainable supply chains. We worked with 51 corporate partners on implementing sustainable policies, practices and inclusive business models in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Key objectives for corporate engagement in 2022 were to expand our partnerships into more strategic, globally aligned partnerships with ambitious long-term commitments, and to develop value propositions and solutions to ensure that European market actors pay for sustainability.  

Strategic and supply chain partnerships

We further expanded and deepened our long-term strategic partnerships with Henkel, Syngenta, Kering, and Stahl. Expected EU regulation on the import of deforestation-free products, and higher standards for transparency and traceability in the value chain are important drivers for companies to develop more sustainable sourcing practices. Moreover, agricultural input suppliers expanded their offer and services to farmers. This contributed to strengthening the position of smallholder farmers in the supply chain in Africa, Asia and Latin America. 

We developed an internal long-term vision on the role of the retail sector in fair food systems, and started a collaboration with Question Mark and Oxfam Novib on the Superlist – a retail sustainability benchmark. Simultaneously we collaborated with several European retailers on environmental and social issues. In the Netherlands, we entered into a new partnership with Albert Heijn Foundation to support their fruits and vegetables suppliers in Latin America and Africa with local community development. 

Communication for change by governments and companies

The Communications and Campaigning team aims to stimulate governments and companies to create change; for example, by activating citizens to raise their voices on sustainability issues. The team also mobilizes funding from individual donors in the Netherlands and maintains the relationship with the Dutch National Postcode Lottery. As a result of our work in 2022, online media publishing about Solidaridad’s work represented a potential audience of 868 million unique visitors, which resulted in almost 173,436 actions, mainly on social media.

Influencing policy

In 2022, we supported the Policy Influencing team in their advocacy efforts around the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and deforestation legislation. We published various impactful articles, distributed mailings and promoted reports including the first-ever Palm Oil Barometer. In the cocoa sector we focused on creating broad support among key stakeholders for the recognition that without cocoa price interventions, a living income for cocoa farmers can not be achieved. The 2022 Cocoa Barometer included a clear message on the need for companies to change their purchasing practices and include pricing interventions as part of their sustainability strategy.

Mobilizing companies

Together with the Corporate Engagement team we aim to spur European companies on to pay for sustainability. In 2022, we developed various communication products with our corporate partners, in which we compliment them for being frontrunners. Hereby we also strive to stimulate their competitors to gain an insight into how they can implement more sustainable policies and practices, as well as adopt more inclusive business models. 

Activating citizens

The Good Clothes Fair Pay Campaign was undertaken in coalition with ASN Bank, Fair Wear Foundation, Fair Trade International, Fashion Revolution, and the union CNV. This campaign, being a European Citizen Initiative (ECI), supports the lobby towards EU living wage legislation in the garment industry. We created awareness and PR for this campaign through the opening of a special pop-up store, called Signastore, in a busy shopping street in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on Black Friday. The campaign had a potential reach of more than 8.5 million people in the Netherlands, and delivered 5,135 signatures directly. 

Individual Fundraising

It was not an easy year for individual fundraising, with increasing conflicts and unrest in the world which caused inflation everywhere, including in the Netherlands. Many Dutch households were personally affected and saw their purchasing power go down. Despite this situation, the team managed to mobilize Euro 928,310 worth of donations from individuals; this figure was slightly above the expected income. 

Working through Public-Private Partnerships

The aim of the Donor Relations team is to grow and diversify Solidaridad’s income as well as build and maintain trustful relationships with our donor partner community. We do this with, for, and on behalf of the entire Solidaridad Network. 

We are proud of our achievements in 2022, and made particular progress on our growth targets. Our Pathways to Prosperity programme in particular, supported by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, provides long-term support to our network and will allow us to bring our work to scale. In addition, the food security top-up to this programme will allow us to respond quickly to the food insecurity situation in various African countries. 

We are also proud of the increased visibility in Germany, resulting in an increased number of partnerships with German stakeholders. The German Postcode Lottery became an instrumental supporter of our work, and relationships with German development organization GIZ are stronger than ever before. We also maintained and built our relations with other partners, such as Sida, Danida, the EU, and the UK government. 

A Catalyst for Creating A Learning Organization

The Knowledge Management and Learning (KML) team plays an important advisory and facilitating role in the development and implementation of good quality planning, monitoring, evaluation and learning (PMEL) processes in the organization. The team hereby aims to contribute to more relevant and effective programming and continuous improvement in the organization. 

Continuous attention to PMEL in our programming

In 2022, we provided advice during the development of new proposals, among which the successful Pathways to Prosperity proposal to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Our advice helped to improve Theories of Change, logframes and monitoring frameworks. In addition, we supported monitoring and evaluation processes in ten running projects funded by European donors and corporate partners. Big tickets were the RECLAIM Sustainability! projects in Europe, the From Climate Victims to Climate Heroes project, the NI-SCOPS project, the Bottom Up! project, and projects funded by our corporate partners Henkel and Syngenta. This work resulted in evidence-based accountability reports and learning for project adaptation. 

Outcome Harvesting

We are particularly positive about the Outcome Harvesting methodology. We learned that this methodology helped us formulate the outcomes of our policy-influencing work in a much sharper way, and to be more explicit about the significance of the recorded changes and our contribution to them. This generated important learnings related to the effectiveness of our key policy-influencing strategies. Based on the successful pilot in 2022, we decided to start using this methodology in the Corporate Engagement team in 2023, as this may help us capture the results of our change agenda with corporations more effectively.

Change that Matters Stories

In its current form, the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive fails to consider the issues experienced by millions of smallholder farmers at the beginning of agricultural value chains worldwide. How can this potentially ground-breaking directive better equip companies in Europe to support smallholders to become part of a more sustainable value chain?

Read more

As the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the EU were negotiating a compromise on the EU regulation on deforestation free products, Solidaridad joined other civil society organizations in calling upon them to maintain a high level of ambition and refrain from any harmful trade offs.

Read more

Endemic sustainability issues within global cocoa supply chains, including child labour and deforestation will continue unless efforts are coupled with the payment of a higher farmgate price for cocoa, according to the 2022 Cocoa Barometer. The report finds that a combination of public policies, private sector purchasing practices, and agricultural solutions are needed.

Read more

The pivotal role of smallholders in the palm oil sector, currently contributing to around 30% of global production, is often overlooked in the sustainability agenda, as policies tend to focus on large industrial plantations. Supply chain-wide smallholder inclusion is crucial for sustainable palm oil production.

Read more

Organization & Governance

We recruited and onboarded many new colleagues in the course of 2022, and 17 new employees joined. We are happy to see that they all landed well in their teams, and we are looking forward to seeing them grow and blossom at our organization. The goal of the diversity policy is that Solidaridad’s staff should reflect the European population wherever possible.

Staff division Solidaridad Europe per country and gender

Solidaridad has its own salary structure, which is based on job descriptions. The tasks and responsibilities are described per job function. The functions are weighed on the basis of the following four characteristics: knowledge and experience, independence, social skills and risks, responsibility and influence. Solidaridad’s salary policy follows that of the Dutch government. 

Integrity

In 2022 zero integrity breaches were reported. The employee survey showed an overall score of 83% on Integrity and values, with 95% of staff indicating they feel they can raise any concern they have, and 97% indicating they would report a breach known to them. This suggests the integrity system is working and staff feel they have a safe place to work. Nonetheless, we will continue to improve upon building a moral compass that provides a safe place to work and enables safe participation in our projects.

Finance

Analysis of the results for 2022 in comparison to 2021 and the budget for 2022

The total income in 2022 was Euro 38,056,758; an increase of Euro 4,835,737 compared to 2021. Income from subsidies decreased by Euro 3,074,661 compared to 2021, and was Euro 1,431,402 higher than budgeted. Income from other fundraising increased by Euro 7,910,398 compared to last year, and was Euro 8,352,356 higher than budgeted.    

The total expenditure in 2022 was Euro 38,135,212, which is Euro 5,012,152 higher than in 2021, and Euro 9,290,211 higher than budgeted. Of the total expenditure, Euro 37,084,015 was spent directly on our objectives. The cost of interest and investments was Euro 87,196. This has led to a negative result of Euro 165,649 in the statement of income and expenditure in 2022, where 2021 had a result of Euro 139,789. The result of 2022 is partially affected by the reserves for financing assets and innovations, leading to an addition of Euro 153,757 to the continuity reserve. 

Historical summary

The table below shows the financial results for the past five years (in Euro).

The full audited annual statements of 2022 can be found below.

Netherlands audited
financial statements Germany audited
financial statements Europe audited
financial statements