SDG
15
An environment-first development organization
Restoring ecosystems and building resilient communities for long-term climate stability.
Every Collaborative for Change project is built on the same framework: four core Sustainable Development Goals that lead to climate action, co-benefits that lead to lasting partnerships, and women at the centre of the local economies that sustain the work.
Core goals
Included in every CFC project
SDG
6
Clean Water and Sanitation
SDG
5
Gender Equality
Women's economic empowerment
SDG
2
Zero Hunger
SDG · Where it all leads
13
Climate Action
Co-benefits
Delivered as each project grows into a self-sustaining community system
3
Good Health and Well-being
4
Quality Education
7
Affordable and Clean Energy
8
Decent Work and Economic Growth
12
Responsible Consumption and Production
SDG · Social
17
Partnerships for the Goals
Our framework
Four pillars. One integrated framework.
We begin with the environment, then build the enterprises communities need, led by women and men, to fund their own social and environmental programs. We connect each project to corporate CSR programs where they exist, and commission LCPA to build the master plan that links it to municipal and national government. Then we measure what lasts, and invest in it.
Environmental
The land comes first. Communities restore indigenous forest, soil and watersheds, protect clean water, and remediate land and water damaged by mining and degradation.
SDGs 6 · 13 · 15
Social including women's economic empowerment
Restored land becomes the basis of a new local economy: food sovereignty, enterprises led by women, men and youth, and people earning from their own crops without middlemen. Income from women-led enterprises funds girls' schooling, family health and community programs.
SDGs 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 7 · 8 · 12
Photo: community meeting with district or LCPA partners
Governance with LCPA
Where corporate CSR programs exist, CFC connects each project to them directly. For the larger framework, CFC commissions the Local Community Prosperity Alliance to build a master plan through its public-private partnership (PPP) and master planning programs, connecting projects to district, municipal and ministerial government.
SDG 17
Our governance frameworkPhoto: monitoring, e.g. measuring seedlings or water
Impact measured and invested
Impact is what remains after a project is built. We are setting core indicators and baselines across our EcoCommunities, so that what we report is what has lasted: trees that survive, land and water restored, women earning, girls in school. Impact is also how we invest. CFC is developing an impact fund, based in New York, and already co-funds and helps design projects in the Philippines with Spring Rain Global.
Reported against specific SDG targets
Women's economic empowerment
When women earn, whole communities benefit.
Our project managers, women and men alike, design enterprise into their projects from the start, and men lead many of the enterprises we develop together with communities. Our focus on women is why we build sanitary pad manufacturing into our projects: it is a profitable business that women run, and it keeps girls in school. Women's earnings pay for girls' schooling and family health, and help fund the next season of restoration.
Photo: a project manager with the women's group
Photo: girls at school
Women-led enterprise
Businesses run by women, built into each project from the design stage.
SDG 5.5 · 8.5
Shared leadership
Project managers of every background build women's enterprise into their communities' plans.
SDG 5.5
Girls stay in school
Menstrual health and household income keep girls learning.
SDG 4.5 · 6.2
Our vision
Self-sufficient communities that think big.
We see a future where communities sustain themselves: restored land that feeds people, local enterprises that fund their own social and environmental programs, and leaders with the confidence to plan beyond the next season.
Working with LCPA, communities sit at the table with district, municipal and ministerial partners, so that a local project becomes part of a regional and national plan. That is how lasting change, and self-sufficiency, reaches whole communities and whole countries.
We are not a charity. We are a development group that begins with the environment.
Our values
Why we focus where we do.
Environment first
A clean environment is the foundation that lets people feed, educate and build livelihoods for themselves. Without healthy land and water, nothing else holds.
Community-led
The communities living with environmental damage are the ones who should lead its repair. Local project managers design and own every project.
Development, not charity
We seed systems that earn and sustain themselves, rather than aid that has to be repeated. Seed capital is a starting point, not a dependency.
Holistic by design
Environmental, social, economic and governance needs are designed together from day one, so no part of a project depends on outside rescue.
Working with nature
Lasting restoration begins by working with nature rather than against it, starting from the condition of the land itself.
Honest reporting
We report only what we can substantiate. No inflated figures, for our communities, our partners or our investors.
How projects develop
One project, four connected stages.
Stage 1
Join
A project manager brings a locally rooted initiative to CFC, published in the Project Initiatives directory.
Stage 2
Train
A six-month learning cycle grounded in ecological restoration and durable community systems.
Stage 3
Design
CFC and the project manager build a proposal across the environmental, social and governance pillars.
Stage 4
Seed
The reviewed EcoCommunity proposal is published, ready for seed capital, and connected to LCPA's funding partner network.
Our governance partner
Local Community Prosperity Alliance
LCPA builds the larger framework for each seeded EcoCommunity: a master plan drawn from its public-private partnership (PPP) and master planning programs, connecting projects to municipal and national government and to its funding partner network.
Our team
Deep expertise, held by people who care about the outcome.
Collaborative for Change began with a conviction: the communities living with environmental damage are the ones who should lead its repair.