Social Value
The interconnected challenges of climate change and social inequality disproportionally affect low-income communities. The COVID-19 pandemic is deepening this inequality – especially in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
TRANSFORM is an award-winning UK public-private sector programme between Unilever and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). Founded in 2015, it aims to change the lives of the 150 million people across the sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia regions by 2030 by helping impact enterprises scale innovative models for tackling inequality.
EY’s own multi-faceted contribution to the programme has included, among other things, senior representation on the TRANSFORM executive committee and management team to provide strategic direction and programme management. In addition, we provided consulting support at the programme level, such as programme managing and providing EY tools and resources for the launch of the TRANSFORM Survive & Thrive platform, and to TRANSFORM-funded impact enterprises in the form of capacity-building projects.
The project was such a success that EY was invited to join TRANSFORM as a full programme partner in 2019. Since then, we have contributed over £5.5mn to individual enterprises and the TRANSFORM programme as a whole. Meanwhile, TRANSFORM has already:
- Invested £40mn in funding and business support
- Assisted 56 impact enterprises and research projects in 13 countries
- Positively impacted four million lives
- Unlocked £18mn in follow-on funding with over 20 business models now rapidly transitioning to scale
TRANSFORM has become an important facet of EY’s global corporate responsibility programme, EY Ripples, where our own ambition is to positively impact one billion lives by 2030. Our not-for-profit contribution embodies the key operating principles that underpin EY Ripples and EY’s mantra of Building a better working world.
View the EY profile in the MCA Members Directory.