Background

What is our goal?

At RAISE our overarching goal is to work towards ensuring that everyone has an income that enables a decent life. We work towards this goal through our two programme pillars:

Job creation

By supporting small enterprises and producer groups, savings and loan schemes and income-generating activities such as insect farming and food production, through close collaborating with our local partners, we aim to promote inclusive job creation essential for long-term income security and a sustainable livelihood.

Social protection

Access to income support in the form of social assistance is important for reducing poverty and inequality across the world. Through research and policy analysis, advocacy, collaboration with local civil society organisations and dialouge with relevant decision-makers and stakeholders, we aim to promote inclusive social protection systems in low- and middle-income countries, where only small fractions of the population are covered.

Background

How did RAISE start?

RAISE was established in the summer of 2018 under the name “Impact Designs”.

The start of RAISE and insect production

Based on research done for World Food Programme in the Kyaka II refugee settlement our founder Rasmus decided to look for new income opportunities for the people in the settlement. This search led him to edible insect production which Dan Church Aid was working on at that time. Subsequently, Rasmus found BoboEco Farm that was also experimenting with insect production and as a result RAISE was established to run the first insect production project.
No one had previously worked on production of mealworm in Uganda, why our founder Rasmus had to apply for an import permit and bring the mealworm with him on a visit to Uganda. – In 2020 we were able to expand the pilotproject as we recieved a grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation of 1 million DKK, which enabled us to expand the pilot project considerably. And in 2021 we could expand it even further with a funding from CISU of 500.000 DKK.
In 2022 we started a large new four year project with support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation with 15 million DKK, which enabled us to expand our activities and add a large research component.

In 2023, we expanded the organisations’ scope of work and in this connection, we changed our name to “RAISE – Research & Action for Income Security” to better reflect our new focus.
At our general assembly it was decided to focus on the overarching goal of ensuring that everybody has an income that enables a decent life. We work towards this goal through our two programme pillars: job creation and access to social security.

Our focus

Generating jobs and access to social protection

We strongly believe that if you want to succeed in eradicating poverty, it will not be enough to create new income opportunities (creating more jobs) – it will also require better access to social protection schemes.
We know from Denmark and other high-income countries how big an impact income transfers have on poverty and inequality. According to OECD, 25 percent of Danes would live in relative poverty without taxes and transfers. But due to comprehensive social protection systems, this number is 5 percent.
Broader redistribution through universal benefits such as pensions and child benefits is also key to reducing poverty and inequality in low- and middle-income countries.
Sustainable Development Goal 1 is to eradicate poverty in all of its forms everywhere. To achieve this, target 1.3 involves ensuring that everybody has access to social security benefits when they need it. Unfortunately we have a long way to go before this target is achieved: 87 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa still do not have access to social security, and globally more than 4 billion people are still left without the support they need and are entitled to.
In RAISE, we work closely with local organisations and governments to improve access to social security in low- and middle-income countries.

Our vision is a world
where everybody
has income security

We work towards this goal through two main programmes:

Expanding access to social security
Support to income generation and decent work

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How we work

We work through local partners in low- and middle-income countries, with a focus on sustainable and systemic long-term change.

Rather than providing services, we aim to support structural transformation and policy change.

We do this by offering

• Knowledge and technical assistance

• Funding

• Networking