When global change is the answer, what are the better questions?

We believe that SDG #17, “Partnerships for the Goals,” is the key to unlocking all the Sustainable Development Goals. EY teams collaborate with leading organizations, such as Acumen, Unreasonable, Impact Hub and Ashoka, as well as with EY clients, including Unilever, Microsoft and SAP, to scale progress to the SDGs. Together, we are achieving the type of impact that no one could achieve alone.

By the end of FY23, EY Ripples had established more than 70 client collaborations, including an EY and Microsoft social impact alliance to impact five million lives. One initiative under this alliance is the Green Skills Passport – a free, online learning program for individuals aged 16 and older who are not engaged in education, employment or training. The Passport aims to tackle rising youth unemployment and address the skills gap in sustainability, by equipping these young individuals with the knowledge and job skills needed to thrive in the green economy.

Delivered through the Microsoft Community Training platform, participants receive 10-12 hours of on-demand, EY-curated micro-learnings to better understand sustainability, green jobs, and skills for employment, while also being connected to job search resources.

The Green Skills Passport was launched in 2023 in the US, India and Bangladesh. In FY24, the program will expand to UK, Italy, Jordan, multiple African countries, Greater China, Philippines, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Argentina.

Another big impact accelerator is our use of social innovation models, like TRANSFORM, which unites corporates, donors, investors and academics to support visionary impact enterprises. Led by Unilever, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and EY, TRANSFORM works with social impact entrepreneurs across Africa, South Asia and Latin America. It offers a combination of grant funding, technical assistance and market connections to help turn sustainable development solutions into thriving businesses. There is no one-size-fits-all formula; each entrepreneur receives tailored support that suits their needs.

Lessons and outputs from every new project are fed back into the TRANSFORM ecosystem. This is important. Too often partnerships are built using a donor-recipient model in which unbalanced power stifles innovation. TRANSFORM is based on a desire to address urgent issues by learning from each other. Enterprises are not only creating business models for the future, but they are also directly solving challenges that are relevant to global organizations. 

For example, the non-profit organization Hasiru Dala works with waste workers in India to collect and process waste and has created the first Fair Trade certified recycled plastic. With TRANSFORM's support, the organization was able to increase the capacity of its recycling facilities tenfold and, in turn, provide Unilever's SunSilk brand with recycled plastic for its shampoo bottles.

Since 2015, TRANSFORM has supported more than 100 projects, impacting the lives of more than 10 million people.

EY Ripples has had to learn to disrupt itself in response to crises and rapid changes.

For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, EY Ripples had to rapidly transition from in-person delivery to virtual support programs for youth and impact entrepreneurs. Together with EY ecosystem alliance members, we moved online. The virtual pivot included mobile text-based learning, virtual curricula for Teach For All network organizations and JA Worldwide and the rapid rollout of Microsoft’s Community Learning Platform with EY learning content. We also set up virtual “Impact Hives” with a cohort of impact entrepreneurs and designed new virtual instances of our business clinics.

Over time, our strategic thinking has also evolved around a number of related areas, including disaster response. EY teams have historically donated millions of dollars when disasters strike. But the EY Ripples approach has added another layer of practical support on top of financial contributions.

Our starting point was the idea that clear governance, consistency and global coordination to large-scale disasters are critical. We provide our people with access to the Benevity platform, which allows all EY people to contribute to disaster response efforts. 

For example, in India, COVID-19 caused more than half a million deaths. EY team’s rapid response, led by the EY India Foundation, focused on immediate relief for the poor and disadvantaged. Lockdown started on 23 March 2020. Five days later, the first EY-funded food package arrived. During the pandemic, we funded more than five million meals for 65,000 people in 11 cities, with EY people cooking 400 meals a day.

EY Ripples is constantly collaborating to further impact. One current area of focus is the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to help accelerate and scale social impact efforts. The global EY organization is already using the unifying EY.ai platform to create exponential value and augment potential for clients. Now, we intend to harness AI to exponentially ramp up social impact in our three EY Ripples focus areas.

Our first step will be a collaboration with Microsoft for a six-month program of pro-bono services to support positive impact startups on their growth journey, as part of the Entrepreneurship for Positive Impact Initiative, accelerating and scaling their progress toward the UN SDGs. Our first pilot cohort will focus on education, where AI can accelerate accessibility to quality education for all. By harnessing AI responsibly, education can transcend its traditional barriers, empowering and expanding the reach of educators everywhere.

To help drive the rapid uptake of AI in education, we are joining the TeachAI initiative – the world’s leading AI education effort. We will be a founding sponsor together with Microsoft, the Infosys Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

We are already working with Teach For All to bring access to GenAI training resources to 15,000 teachers worldwide – providing an AI-centered curriculum of student activities, further enhancing the educational landscape within the Teach For All network.

Future programs will focus on empowering impact entrepreneurs to scale their ground-breaking solutions to deliver other SDGs. AI will be a game changer for these smaller organizations, leveling the playing field by providing insights and driving innovation. Startups and innovators can leverage AI to scale rapidly – reaching a wider audience as they work to provide communities with clean water, food and sustainable energy or improve health outcomes.

EY Ripples also intends to use AI as a powerful ally in the fight against climate change. Climate use cases for AI include analyzing vast amounts of data to model and predict climate patterns, help optimizing energy consumption and driving sustainable practices.

Thank you to our ecosystem alliance members

In the first five years, EY Ripples has expanded to 126 participating countries, developed a base of 22,000 impact entrepreneurs and continues to diligently strive to reach our goal of impacting one billion lives by 2030. None of this would have been possible without the collaboration of our vast and diverse global ecosystem. From giant multi-nationals to lone impact entrepreneurs, these purpose-led organizations share our desire to create waves of change for good. We thank them for their vision, passion and willingness to collaborate with us on groundbreaking initiatives as we embark on the next era of EY Ripples.