Waterloo, ON– From February 6th to February 12th, MEDA participated in International Development Week by highlighting the pressing issues that impact global poverty alleviation and celebrating how Canadians have contributed to positive change through development. MEDA’s technical directors shared their experience and expertise, focusing on four core themes to MEDA’s work: Women’s Economic Empowerment, Financial Resilience, Financial Education, and Climate Change and Adaptation.
Drawing upon MEDA’s long-standing work with entrepreneurs around the globe, MEDA shared blogs from each theme that discussed how MEDA is working to fulfill the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and advance its strategic goal of creating or sustaining decent work for 500,000 people by 2030.
Some highlights from ID Week 2022 include:
- Using women’s economic empowerment tools, like gender lens investment models, can tackle gender-based violence (GBV) and improve women’s economic circumstances.
- Economic resilience must be combined with improvements in equality and climate change mitigation efforts to ‘build back stronger.’
- More accessible financial education can help boost people’s earnings, savings, and long-term financial health.
- Climate change poses threats but also opportunities to agricultural producers in Ukraine.
International Development Week provides MEDA and its partner organizations with an opportunity to draw attention to critical issues in the development sector, as Cooperation Canada notes in its news release. Women’s economic empowerment, economic resilience, climate change mitigation efforts, and financial education are all important means that people living in poverty need to improve their economic circumstances. MEDA looks forward to next year’s International Development week to showcase all the work of its staff and partners.
Since 1991, the goal of International Development Week has been to raise awareness of international development work and to highlight Canadians’ important contributions to making the world more just, stable, and peaceful.
