It’s a busy but exciting time! We are identifying applications in the African Great Lakes Region on gold, and we’re planning pilots to develop verifiable conflict-free supply chains in Colombia.
Expansion of Solutions for Hope PlatformAs you may have seen in yesterday’s press release, RESOLVE recently received a grant from Motorola Solutions Foundation to support the expansion of the Solutions for Hope platform. You can read the story of Solutions for Hope here, but the short story is that it was conceived in 2011 when, because of legitimate concerns about conflict minerals, many companies were refusing to source from the DRC. A de facto trade embargo would have significant implications for the livelihoods of the millions of ASM miners in the DRC, and Solutions for Hope was initiated by Motorola Solutions and AVX as a pilot project to demonstrate that companies could source legal, conflict-free tantalum from the DRC while meeting their due diligence responsibilities.The pilot was a success and gathered the attention and participation of a number of leading electronics companies. The Conflict-Free Tin Initiative launched shortly after, aiming to apply the Solutions for Hope model to tin. Now, working with leaders from both initiatives, and with this support from Motorola Solutions Foundation, we are building on the successes and lessons to expand the platform to other minerals and geographies.It’s a busy but exciting time! We are identifying applications in the African Great Lakes Region on gold, and we’re planning pilots to develop verifiable conflict-free supply chains in Colombia. RESOLVE President Steve D’Esposito and former Canadian Ambassador Tim Martin recently published an article on the evolution of supply chain initiatives over the last 15 years and the continuing need for multi-sector interventions to support capacity building in conflict-affected regions.Motorola Solutions Director of Supply Chain Corporate Responsibility Mike Loch will be talking about these issues and the future of the Solutions for Hope platform tomorrow as part of an event hosted by the Ford Foundation and chaired by UN Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region, Mary Robinson. A video of the event, called “Managing Congo’s Natural Resource Wealth: From Plunder to Shared Prosperity” can be found here.
At RESOLVE, we’re here to tackle the toughest global challenges. The ones nobody else wants to touch. Where people are in conflict and planet problems are stuck. We’re here to unstick them. It’s not easy. It takes grit and ingenuity. And finding and working with the right partners. But we’re not called RESOLVE for nothing.
