10 ways Concern is working to advance the Sustainable Development Goals

Ending poverty is at the heart of Concern’s mission, vision, and values, so it’s no surprise that this SDG and its targets are central to all of our areas of focus. 

• Eradicate extreme poverty for everyone living below the international poverty line of $3.00 (USD) per day.
• Ensure equal rights and access to economic and natural resources, basic services, land ownership, technology, and financial services.
• Build climate and economic resilience for people who stand to lose the most during an economic or climate crisis.

One way Concern works to ensure equal rights and access to financial services is through Village Savings and Loans Associations (also known as Community Savings and Loans Associations). 

VSLAs are small, member-run microfinancing groups that help people living in poverty build up their savings and community cohesion. Members are also able to take out loans and emergency insurance at low interest rates. By pooling their savings and self-managing loan distributions, VSLAs offer financial services to people who may otherwise have few options for affordable credit or loans. 

Last year, Concern Liberia supported more than 500 CSLAs as part of several livelihood programmes. Collectively, they have helped thousands of participants to mobilise savings, invest in their agribusinesses, and improve their families’ overall well-being. 

We won’t end poverty without ending hunger. We obviously address this head-on with our health and nutrition programmes, but these targets factor across all key areas of our work:

• Ensure global access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food year-round (particularly for people who live in poverty or vulnerable situations). 
• End all forms of malnutrition, especially for children under the age of 5.
• Promote sustainable food production that increases productivity while helping to maintain ecosystems and climate resilience. 

In 2000, Concern and Valid co-launched an experimental pilot programme that combined a new therapeutic food to treat acute malnutrition with a system for decentralising the treatment, saving families from needing to travel to therapeutic feeding centres that can often be hours away by foot. Since then, Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (aka CMAM) has been recognised by the World Health Organisation as the gold standard for treating malnutrition, and can see cure rates over 90%. 

Our latest iteration of CMAM is the Surge approach, designed to prevent a hunger crisis before it starts. We’re implementing Surge in Somalia as part of an integrated health and nutrition programme that, in 2025, treated over 85,000 people for acute malnutrition.

We’ve made strides in universal access to healthcare over the last 20 years. However, a significant portion of the global population – especially in conflict zones and remote areas – still lack access to basic healthcare services. Targets here include:

• Reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births. 
• End preventable deaths of newborns and children under the age of 5.
• End the global epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases, and combat hepatitis, waterborne illnesses, and other communicable diseases. 

Afghanistan’s remote and mountainous Takhar and Badakhshan regions have few health clinics. The tricky terrain has also left people walking for hours to get care. With few options close to home, Takhar and Badakhshan have often ranked high for child and maternal mortality rates.

At the beginning of 2025, Concern established eight Family Health House clinics across these two regions and worked with community leaders to encourage their use. Services include safe childbirth, ante- and postnatal care, treatment of common childhood illnesses, nutrition support, and vaccinations. In 2025, these Family Health Houses saw over 80,000 patients, with one resident calling them “a game-changer.” 

Education is key to ending poverty, yet the number of children and youth out of school is up compared to 2015. Among other targets, this SDG focuses on:

• Access to free primary and secondary schooling for all children by 2030.
• Affordable vocational training and quality higher education for men and women who want to pursue tertiary education.
• Eliminate gender, wealth, and other disparities in education. 

In order to improve education outcomes, Kenya’s Ministry of Education recently placed a stronger focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths). This curriculum will ensure that students have the skills they need when they enter the workforce. However, in rural areas like Marsabit County, where there are fewer resources and trained teachers, it can be hard to keep up. 

Working with the Ministry of Education and county administration, Concern supported 27 schools with mobile STEM laboratories and kits, giving students the chance to have hands-on lessons and learn at the same pace as their peers in other regions. Their academic performance improved, and one Concern-supported school even won at the national level in the prestigious Young Scientists Kenya National Science and Technology Exhibition.

As the UN notes, women and girls represent half of the world’s population – and its potential. Achieving equality for all women and girls is essential for sustainable development:

• Eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls in both the public and private spheres.
• Recognise and value unpaid care and domestic work and promote shared responsibility within the home. 
• Ensure women’s full and effective economic participation and opportunities for leadership. 

Livelihoods in Pakistan are often vulnerable to natural disasters – especially for women. As part of our wider emergency response programme, Building Resilience and Addressing Vulnerability to Emergencies (BRAVE), Concern works specifically with Pakistani women to create sustainable business opportunities and achieve economic empowerment. 

Through this, we’ve launched the BRAVE Women brand, which has facilitated links between programme participants and the private sector. BRAVE Women supports female artisans to lead climate-resilient value chains through handicrafts, honey production, pickling, and dry-fruit processing. With these products, 1,800 women were linked to national and international markets in 2025. 

Currently, one out of every four people in the world still lack access to safely-managed drinking water, and the global water crisis is worsening in many countries. The targets for this goal include: 

• Safe and affordable drinking water accessible to all. 
• Adequate and equitable access to sanitation and hygiene infrastructure, including an end to open defecation. 
• Improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping, and halving the proportion of untreated wastewater. 

The Mandera triangle is a meeting point where Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia meet. Rainfall in this region is erratic and unpredictable, leaving it prone to droughts and floods. Women who collect water in this region often walk several miles multiple times a day to collect contaminated water. Some have lost pregnancies due to the activity, others have lost young children due to wildlife. 

Concern’s Irish-Aid–funded Hanaano programme is helping with that. As part of the larger programme goal of reducing malnutrition in the area, we’re working with communities to bring clean water closer to home, installing taps in villages and setting up plans for their maintenance and upkeep. For families in this region, the taps bring convenience, health, and peace of mind.

This goal ensures that the economic and work opportunities available to people are decent and dignified and offer opportunities for sustained growth in the long-run. Targets include:

• Guarantee equal pay for work of equal value across all sectors, especially for women and people with disabilities. 
• Reduce youth unemployment rates and support a global strategy for youth employment. 
• Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification and innovation.  

First piloted in 2002, the Graduation approach has helped an estimated 14 million people across 50 countries break the cycle of poverty. Participants receive training, grants, and low-interest loans to develop small businesses that can adapt to their circumstances.

Last year in Rwanda, 420 families completed our first cohort of Green Graduation. An additional 500 families continued into the second cohort, and in their first year launched 20 agribusinesses. This Irish Aid-funded programme adapted the standards of Graduation to the realities of climate change in the country, making it more sustainable for communities to come. 

Climate change is an undeniable threat to our world, with the effects already visible. But it’s not too late to address the causes and effects to protect our planet and our communities:

• Strengthen resilience to climate-related hazards and natural disasters.
• Build knowledge and capacity to meet the challenges of climate change.
• Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning. 

Climate Smart Agriculture is a series of farming techniques that meet the current weather patterns head-on. Often, the biggest results come from the simplest changes – like using more drought-resistant seeds or spreading the stalks of last season’s harvest on the ground to maintain soil moisture and fertility.

In Malawi, Concern trained 350 lead farmers in CSA techniques via our flagship programme, Food Systems for Food Security, in 2025. These lead farmers then shared those techniques, including agroforestry and crop diversity, to over 2,500 “follower” farmers, ensuring that the knowledge is shared and internalised. We also installed 18 solar pumps to sustain participating farmers beyond the rainy season. Thanks to these interventions, more than 500 families were able to achieve two annual harvests without incurring prohibitive operational expenses. 

Conflict, violence, and insecurity are among the leading causes of poverty and hunger this century. Targets for this SDG include:

• Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere. 
• Inclusive and representative decision-making at all levels. 
• End abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence against children.

Just one eighth of Niger’s land is considered arable; however, 80% of the Nigerien workforce relies on agriculture and livestock. This has placed land at a premium, and led to increased tensions between farmers and pastoralists as more land degrades. Through the Agence Française de Développement-funded Nazari programme, Concern has worked to rehabilitate degraded land and foster both peaceful coexistence and better management of natural resources among farming and pastoral communities. 

Last year, we seeded 180 hectares of grazing land for pastoralists, and demarcated and developed livestock passage corridors. These pathways prevent conflicts between farmers and herders by clearly defining agricultural and pastoral areas. 

The only way we’re going to achieve the first 16 Sustainable Development Goals is if we work together – which gives us the last, but also important goal of partnerships between governments, the private sector, NGOs, and civil society:

• Strengthen domestic resource mobilisation, including through international support to low-income countries, to improve domestic capacity. 
• High-income countries fully implement their ODA commitments, including the goal of spending 0.7% of their gross national income to ODA each year. 
• Mobilise additional financial resources for low-income countries.

We leverage our decades of experience to influence action within the international community, addressing the challenges we face and amplifying the voices and opinions of communities who deserve appropriate and timely support.

Last year, informed by evidence from the Hanaano programme, Concern advocated for policy change at the national level. We also brought this advocacy to major regional and international events, and produced four publications (including a research paper co-produced with Tufts University) for national policy makers. This research led to the development of 29 community plans in Kenya and Somalia, which are now being used to influence resource allocation.