Four Pillars
SEF builds on four pillars as essential for delivering maximum positive impact and social benefit. In short, the needs and urgency of the problems are great and pervasive and so all SEF’s projects must be:
1. Effective
Put simply, SEF’s projects must work. They must effectively deliver real and measurable social change and thereby create social value.
2. Sustainable
Sustainability can be understood in two ways depending on the project. In some instances SEF’s goal is ‘Self-sustainability’ where the project aims to achieve financial and operational independence. In other instances, SEF’s goal is ‘supportive sustainability’ where projects are unlikely to generate enough income to be self-sustaining but their sustainability is thus reliant on the effectiveness of the programme, the impact on the social problem, and the ability to attract key partners donors, volunteers and returning beneficiaries.
3. Ethical
SEF’s programmes must be just and fair and be especially cautious of any undertaking that unintentionally disempowers communities and individuals. A holistic understanding of the challenges and solutions is vital to ensuring projects don’t make bad situations worse despite best intentions.
4. Replicable
The social need is vast and pervasive and as such, if a project is not replicable and capable of going to scale then it is unable to make the kinds of inroads necessary for sustained and systemic change.