Highlights
- In 2024, direct revenue in North America increased by over 33% to €6.6 million from €4.9 million in 2023, while significantly reducing financial dependence on other Solidaridad entities.
- Solidaridad North America implemented projects with four of the largest donors globally, including USAID, the Gates Foundation, The Walmart Foundation, and Cargill.
- High profile speaking engagements at OECD and Climate Week NY, and a presence at national conferences, such as Innovation Forum Future of Food & Beverage, enhanced Solidaridad’s visibility and reputation as an innovator and leader in the complex arena of first mile of supply chain sustainability and climate solutions.
Fundraising, Partnerships & Engagement
The North America team carried out a wide range of activities, from strengthening the implementation of ongoing projects, cultivating new partnerships with donors and stakeholders to advance impact, and working to co-design new projects with companies that we expect to announce in 2025.
Amazonia Connect finished its second year of project implementation, where the team provided integrated technical assistance to 3,041 producers (34% women) in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, improved forest and biodiversity monitoring tools covering an area of 8.8 million ha in the Amazon region, and engaged with 12 private sector enterprises working to improve deforestation and supply chain monitoring.
The Solidaridad teams in North America and Southern Africa completed the second year of a project supported by the Gates Foundation that strengthens and scales Kvuno, a social enterprise that delivers 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 reach over 60,000 farmers who are actively using its digital platform. Kvuno also grew its network of hubs and field agents to deliver key farming services, including seed multiplication and microloans, and piloted new services including insurance and digital agronomic advisory. The team also cultivated several new strategic partnerships to expand its customer base and service bundle. Read more about the programme here.
Solidaridad’s global partnership with Cargill completed its first full year of implementation in July 2024. The partnership aims to reach 2,000 farmers in Latin America and Asia over the course of three years working to improve farmer livelihoods and sustainable land use, and support climate-smart agriculture.
In the first year, Solidaridad Malaysia completed sustainability assessments of 50 smallholder oil palm farmers to develop a baseline that will inform work going forward, and over 420 smallholders received training on sustainable production practices, exceeding the first year target. In Argentina, a new land-use monitoring tool was deployed with local governments to ensure sustainable management of valuable forest resources in the Gran Chaco. The tool will be rolled out in other provinces as well.
Oil palm farmers in Colombia and soybean farmers in Paraguay received training and have begun implementing good agricultural practices. These efforts were bolstered with digital tools, including Solidaridad’s Extension Solution and Agrolearning, that provide individually-customized training based on farmers’ performance.
In 2023, Solidaridad received a 1 million USD grant from the Walmart Foundation to support the implementation of a jurisdictional initiative focused on beef in the new municipality of Campo Aceval in the Paraguayan Chaco. 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.
In 2024, Solidaridad teamed up with the local government in Campo Aceval to launch the Committee for Sustainable Agricultural Development. This group brings together small farmers, Indigenous communities, cooperatives, and local officials to work on projects that support the town’s economic growth, environmental protection, and social well-being.
The main goal is to help the people of Campo Aceval gain the skills they need to plan and run these projects on their own, while encouraging teamwork and setting the stage for future efforts.
One of the biggest problems identified is the lack of reliable access to water, made worse by unpredictable weather. Food insecurity is another serious issue. Local farmers said they need more training in good farming practices—ways to improve soil health, grow a variety of crops, and increase harvests while protecting the environment.
As a result, in 2025 Solidaridad and the committee will kick off training programs to fill knowledge gaps and help the community tackle its most urgent challenges. Improving water access is now a top priority. Solutions like collecting rainwater and upgrading irrigation systems are being explored. At the same time, training programs will teach farmers how to use techniques that work best for the local crops and climate.
To show how these new methods can make a difference, Solidaridad will create demonstration plots where farmers can see the results for themselves—better yields, healthier soil, and more sustainable farming. There will also be training to help local leaders create policies that support long-term agricultural and community development.
Solidaridad has teamed up with the NGO, IMPACT, to scale up the responsible artisanal gold supply chain in Côte d’Ivoire and encourage traders to participate in responsible sourcing. Together, we’re testing how digital tools – one developed by IMPACT and one developed by Solidaridad – can support traders and the artisanal mines they source from to operate responsibly.
Solidaridad’s app, Extension Solution, helps mine managers to track their progress on international standards (like the CRAFT Code), generate workplans to close any existing gaps, and upload evidence of their progress. This gives miners an efficient tool for managing operations at the mine, and sharing text, documents and photos with traders in real time, making the whole supply chain more transparent and efficient.
This digital tool integrates with other tools,such as Bloom by IMPACT, to share data with relevant actors and support compliance and social impact reporting. The increased transparency is an exciting innovation, not just for miners and traders in producing countries, but also for gold buyers who often face challenges tracking practices in the first mile of their supply chains. Read more here.
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. At the network level, a representative of NAM participates in the global community of practice (COP), and supports the team to develop Solidaridad’s Gender and Social Inclusion Policy.
Climate & Locally-Led Adaptation
North America’s Climate Change and Green Growth Specialist took the lead role in Solidaridad’s Climate Change and Natural Resource Management Thematic Learning Group in September 2024. Through this work, the group is providing technical backstopping for learning pilots and supporting account management, including within the NDC Partnership, and the Global Community of Practice for LLA. The North America team also supports Solidaridad’s Payment for Ecosystem Service (PES) Unit and serves on the PES Steering Committee and helps 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
Over the past year, we bid farewell to our former board chair Kannan Pashupathy, and welcomed Chris Wolz as new board chair.
Human Resources
In 2024, Solidaridad North America mobilized additional communications and project coordination support through contractors, while maintaining a staff of 6.2 FTE. Additional support is secured through part-time consultants, interns, membership with Connective Impact, and Bid Boss, a consulting firm providing strategic financial management support. Legal support is provided by TrustLaw, Mintz, and audit support by Baker Tilly.
The team continues to optimize the use of our internal data and financial system Plaza for agile proposal development and project management.
Communications
In 2024, the bulk of communications from North America focused on successful implementation of the communications strategy for Amazonia Connect, and supporting consortium partners as they created engaging stories and content telling the stories of our progress. See a full listing of links on the Amazonia Connect web page.
The North American communications manager also supported the editorial development and public relations rollout of the report ‘The Grounds for Sharing: A study of value distribution in the coffee industry’. In the North American market, the report was covered by Daily Coffee News, Barista Magazine,Perfect Daily Grind, and Fresh Cup.
Events
The Amazonia Connect consortium held its second Pause and Reflect Session (PRS) in Sao Paolo, Brazil, in June 2024. The three-day long in-person workshop provided the consortium the opportunity to celebrate its successes from the second year, take stock of lessons learned, strengthen collaboration among consortium members, and make plans for realizing a regional impact through the programme.
Solidaridad North America participated in a panel hosted by Business for Social Responsibility at Climate Week 2024 in New York City. The panel 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. Read reflections on the event from Head of Corporate Engagement Jennifer Horning here.
At the Innovation Forum’s Future of Food and Beverage event in Minneapolis in June, Solidaridad North America together with Cargill hosted a roundtable discussion on the privacy and security concerns when a nonprofit or downstream buyer seeks data from smallholder farmers. This data is often collected by nonprofits and extension workers during the course of improvement projects, and buyers may benefit from accessing it, especially as new supply chain disclosure laws come into force. Ultimately, this data is owned by the farmer, and any third party would need to manage it in line with regulations and fairly compensate the farmer for access. The roundtable raised awareness of this relatively new topic among North American food companies and sparked lots of good debate.
In addition, Solidaridad North America participated in the annual spring OECD Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains in Paris, the leading event globally for the responsible minerals space. Team members also attended the Specialty Coffee Association Expo in Chicago making important connections and supporting participation by teams from Solidaridad East & Central Africa, and Solidaridad in Honduras.
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 2024, there were no integrity issues to report.
Finance
North America’s own income increased 33% compared to previous year. At the same time, income from Solidaridad entities decreased 51% since this is the first year NA did not receive internal support, however most of the new income was transferred to other Solidaridad entities for implementing projects, increasing 44% compared previous year, at the end, the 2024 net result has 5% variation compared to budget. Though Solidaridad North America remains below breakeven, this is the first year there has been no budget support from the Network.
North America reserves are negatively impacted this year by $96K USD, totalizing a deficit in reserves of $187K USD, Donors reserves as of Dec 31st. 2024 is $2.6MM USD.
All information above is pending the auditing process. The full audited annual statements of 2024 will be added as soon as they are available.