Sustainable solutions to the world’s development challenges

The issue

What if we could leverage the strength of business, government and civil society to address the world’s most pressing development challenges, including sanitation and access to water? That’s the question that we at Unilever, together with DFID, set out to answer when we established TRANSFORM in 2015.

What can we do about it?

TRANSFORM doesn’t just fund projects; it provides support to enterprises that have innovative and scalable ideas that can transform communities. These include a mobile platform that encourages shopkeepers in Kenya to become change agents in their communities and a portable handwashing station for low-income households in Bangladesh.

The businesses we partner with deliver products or services that target the poorest households in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. To date, we have supported 45 projects across 11 countries.

While impact enterprises are key for responding to the coronavirus crisis in developing countries, they are also at risk. We are working quickly to build a platform to support these enterprises to Survive and Thrive during and after the pandemic.