International day for the eradication of poverty

Today is International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, and this year’s theme is ‘Acting together to empower children, their families and communities to end poverty’.

PIDG’s strategy is aligned to the SDGs and aims to deliver high-impact development to combat poverty in rural and remote populations, to increase the supply of jobs, improve livelihoods and create essential links to urban areas.

According to World Bank figures, 10% of the world’s population remain in extreme poverty and more than two-thirds of people live in rural areas where there is severely restricted infrastructure, access to social amenities as well as healthcare provision. Rural development is essential not only to poverty eradication, employment generation and economic development, but also to sustainable urbanisation.

These are just some of our projects contributing to high-impact development by creating jobs, improving livelihoods and benefitting and empowering children, families and entire communities.

InfaCo Asia, Ba Lai Water Supply Plant – Ba Tri District, Ben Tre Province, Vietnam

When fully operational, the InfraCo Asia project, Ba Lai Water Supply Plant will provide access to reliable and affordable water supply, unlocking social, environmental and economic benefits including access to clean water for around 100,000 people in Ba Tri district. Water from the project will be three times more affordable than treated bottled water, currently the main source of clean water in the rural and semi-urban communities. A more readily available clean water supply will help reduce the risk of contracting disease and free up time spent on domestic work by women and children, who typically bear the burden of securing water for household needs.

Ba Lai water supply project

Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund, Gigawatt solar and Agahozo shalom Youth Village, orphanage, Rwanda

 Funded by PIDG company EAIF and built in just 12 months, it was the first commercial scale solar plant in East Africa and boosted Rwanda’s electricity supply by 6%. The plant is built on land owned by the orphanage, Agahozo Shalom Youth Village. The orphanage’s funds benefit from a steady flow of income from the power plant, helping to support its education and health programmes.

Gigawatt Solar, Rwanda

InfraCo Africa, Chanyanya Irrigation project, Zambia

The Zambian Government are committed to pro-poor agricultural led development and have identified irrigation as central to long term economic growth and poverty reduction.

InfraCo Africa’s Chanyanya Irrigation project has given local smallholders access to individual irrigated market garden plots which  provide the opportunity to farm year-round and grow a variety of higher value vegetable crops. Once all investment into the irrigation project is repaid,  Chanyanya Smallholders Cooperative Society will own the commercial enterprise outright -an empowering long-term goal.

Chanyanya Zambia

GuarantCo and TAF, DeafTawk online sign language services, Pakistan

GuarantCo has pledged to grant USD 80,000 to DeafTawk, a local start-up in Pakistan also supported by the country’s leading digital telecommunications company, Jazz. DeafTawk aims to provide on-line sign language services to empower people with hearing impairments. This project builds on the earlier success of GuarantCo’s partnership in the country to support an SMS-based female literacy programme which enabled 4,000 women to read the newspaper, write in Urdu, perform everyday calculations and gain necessary life skills, that would benefit their families and the wider community.

DeafTawk, Pakistan