Environment and Social Economic Development (ESED)

Fostering SUSTAINABILITY AND SOCIAL WELLBEING

The NGO landscape provides among others the opportunity for people to seek lifelong jobs in other to satisfy their desire and passions for delivering quality services.

While workers bring in their optimum and positive energies towards the realisation of organisational goals, there is a balance desire for improved working conditions for them and their dependents.

The increasing desire of EPDA towards a transformational approach has led to the development of the environment and social economic development program. This program aims at improving the well-being of every individual working for EPDA and target beneficiary communities so they can reach their full potential. The success of society is linked to the well-being of each and every citizen within the context of directly or indirectly linked to EPDA. This therefore entails investing in people and bringing smiles on the faces of beneficiaries of our programs. This shall require the removal of barriers so that all workers (EPDA) most especially who are the direct beneficiaries of this program can journey toward their dreams with confidence and dignity.

It consists of refusing to accept that volunteers who work to learn should one day find pleasure in their earnings commensurate with their competences and quality services and that people in low-income communities will lift out of poverty to boost development of their desires. It is about helping people so they can move forward on their path to self-sufficiency.

Every new EPDA staff must have the opportunity to grow, develop their own skills and contribute to their families and communities in a meaningful way. If they are healthy, well educated and trained to remain or enter the workforce and are able to make a decent wage they are better equipped to meet their basic needs and be successful. Their families will also do well and the whole of society will benefit.

Learning must start early in life. By investing in early learning initiatives, we can ensure a greater degree of success amongst our citizens. Making sure that children get a good start in their education goes a long way to increasing their success later in life.

EPDA feels that having good employees will result in the likelihood of achieving better results. When EPDA succeeds, the social wellbeing and economic situation of its beneficiary communities definitely improve as that should be the only milestone for its success.

EPDA believes that poverty reduction needs to be taken with a social development approach which includes but not limited to investing in people. This approach is called the human social economic development which fundamentally means a growth process which enables people and societies to realize their full potential. EPDA therefore needs to go beyond looking at government to find ways to develop and/or invest in the most valuable resources, the citizens. EPDA by taking this approach will need to share responsibility with community organizations, businesses, universities and municipalities in the task of improving the well-being of all its workers, volunteers, citizens and preventing and reducing poverty.

The action

Development and self-realization is therefore both a right and a duty springing from the very essence of human life. This is the fundamental source of motivation for EPDA’s involvement in environment and social economic development as its social enterprise initiative.

EPDA will therefore invest resources and time to build social enterprises such as youth programs and services, job creation through food value chain development,  health care for children, business start-ups, promotion of entrepreneurial leadership, top-up saves for employees, promotion of healthy, active living and safe and secure communities to name a few..