2020 WINNERS
Constellations
Collaborating for Social Impact
Introduction
The Constellations Awards celebrate the remarkable ways in which social investors across Asia collaborate to address the complex challenges of our times.
Asia is big, diverse, and complex – and so are its challenges. Our members meet those challenges by collaborating to pioneer solutions at scale.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us the cracks in economies and the social sector but the social investment sector has responded unflinchingly to the unfolding crisis in the short term, and is nurturing systemic solutions for the long run. Our members have established shared aims and harnessed the strengths of different stakeholders to meet the moment with imaginative action. The Constellations Awards 2020 celebrate the ingenuity and effectiveness of our members.
The projects we recognise in the Constellations Awards are inspiring, but more importantly, they are action-oriented. We seek to illuminate the ripples of positive impact they have triggered, share their game-changing point of view, and provide these projects new means of accessing capital.
5 collaborative solutions
In 2020, we are proud to recognise 5 outstanding collaborative solutions that are addressing complex problems of our times.
By AVPN
AVPN Constellations 2020 | World’s Largest Quality Education Development Bond
Challenge At Hand
A typical student in India is at least two grades behind the level expected in literacy and numeracy indicators for their age. Therefore, there is a need to improve the quality of learning and learning outcomes for children, as also emphasised in SDG-4 (Quality Education).
Collaborative Solutions
The Quality Education India Development Impact Bond (DIB) brings together over 15 organisations from the private, public and nonprofit sectors, for the first time, to improve learning outcomes for 200,000+ primary school children from marginalised communities in India. These interventions enable students to ‘catch-up’ between 1 -2.5 grades over the course of four years, moving children towards their age-appropriate learning levels.
Partners
Implementing Partners
Risk Investor
Convener & Intermediary
Anchor Funder
Supported by
Outcome Evaluator
Performance Manager
Corporate Partner
Knowledge & Technical Partners
Legal Partners
Type Of Resources Pooled
- Estimated total financial contribution (in USD): $11m
- Michael and Susan Dell Foundation’s technical insight into India’s education sector
- UBSOF’s experience from being risk funders on the Educate Girls DIB – the first DIB in India.
- BAT’s deep expertise in South Asia and wide networks helped to secure new donors and champions for this DIB.
By AVPN
AVPN Constellations 2020 | Leveraging AI for Strengthening India’s Public Health
Challenge At Hand
There is increasing pressure on public healthcare services in India due to scarce human resources and inadequate infrastructure. Technologies, especially emerging technologies, may have a transformational impact on health delivery in India but there is inadequate ecosystem preparedness and policy frameworks to propel these innovations.
Collaborative Solutions
Technical experts need to partner with the public sector to build progressive policies that integrate AI into public health. Thus, the project initiative, AI in Public Health, was created to assist the government to achieve health outcomes by digitizing healthcare services, which supports priorities in India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to roll out the National Digital Health Blueprint. The team instituted sustainable governance structures to resolve key policy challenges in kick starting the AI ecosystem for public health and engaged the larger ecosystem in creating suggestive policy frameworks. Further, in-depth analysis of various national health programmes was conducted to understand existing AI readiness and key application areas for emerging technologies.
Partners
Type Of Resources Pooled
- IIC placed a team of 5 young professionals to carry on the mission under a financial grant from RF.
- IIC’s work builds upon a 2019 report, “Artificial Intelligence in Global Health: Defining a Collective Path Forward”, and translates the AI opportunities defined into actionables for the MoHFW.
By AVPN
AVPN Constellations 2020 | Eliminating Systemic Stunting in Indonesia
Challenge At Hand
In Indonesia, 1 in 3 children under the age of 5 are stunted, the 5th highest rate in the world, according to the 2013 National Health Survey. Stunting not only causes children to be more susceptible to diseases, but also impairs their mental and physical development.
Collaborative Solutions
A 5-year programme, Better Investment for Stunting Alleviation (BISA), has been designed to assist the Government of Indonesia to realise their stunting reduction goals. By effectively implementing nutrition policies and utilising government funding, BISA aims to improve sanitation access and practices at provincial, district and village levels. Read more on the programme via The Power of Nutrition’s website.
Partners
Type Of Resources Pooled
- Estimated total financial contribution (in USD): $10m across two Indonesian provinces, West Java and East Nusa Tenggara
- Executing a gender-sensitive social behaviour change plan
- Providing technical guidance to health and nutrition service providers
- Advocating across national, provincial, district and village levels to reallocate budgets for stunting reduction
By AVPN
AVPN Constellations 2020 | Building an Ecosystem to Equip Youth in India
Challenge At Hand
Youth in India are not sufficiently equipped with 21st century employability skills needed for a digital economy.
Collaborative Solutions
The Future Right Skills Network empowers 100,000 youth every year with foundational employability skills. Youth enrolled in Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) across the states of Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, are provided 250 hours of training for skills on digital fluency, workplace readiness, career management and life skills. Quest’s curriculum is also optimized for mobile phones to enable on-the-go self-learning. This partnership aims to to transform the ITI skilling ecosystem through digital technologies, capacity building, and 21st-century skills for students and educators.
Partners
Accenture, Cisco and Quest Alliance to equip 1.5 million youths across India with foundational employability skills for the digital economy.
Type Of Resources Pooled
- Customizing digital and classroom tools to suit the context of industrial training institutes. Quest Alliance tailored 250 hours of training for learners and educators to suit the context of Industrial Training Institutes. This curriculum was also optimized for mobile to drive impact alongside greater digital inclusion.
- Co-authoring student curriculum on “Employability Skills”
- Innovations in projects like a low cost Raspberry Pi server that hosts digital content in an offline environment
- Consulting services to review systems, drive relationships and connections with the Govt. of India and State Governments
By AVPN
AVPN Constellations 2020 | Improving School Leadership Development in Indonesia
Challenge At Hand
In Indonesia, there is a considerable challenge in delivering high-quality teaching to every student across the country.
Collaborative Solutions
Inisiatif Kepemimpinan Pendidikan untuk Raih Prestasi (INSPIRASI) aims to develop a proven school leadership development model that can improve student learning. By working with philanthropists, corporates, academics and policymakers to implement and analyse different pilot programs, this 1.5 year collaboration can support school leaders from across 25 medium to low performing schools through professional development workshops and one-to-one coaching sessions.
In July 2020, INSPIRASI will bring on an additional 90 schools making the total pilot group 115 schools. The cohort consists of primary schools serving marginalized students both from the public and religious (madrasahs) schools.
Partners
Type Of Resources Pooled
- Funding in the form of cash grant and in-kind support
- Best practices were sourced from similar programs in India, Malaysia, and Kenya
OTHER ENTRIES
More commendable entries
Credit Suisse, together with fellow AVPN member Village Capital formed a partnership aimed at strengthening Social Enterprise (SE) development and removing obstacles to the flow of capital from funders into SEs. Tapping on the AVPN network of funders and resource providers, they both harnessed their partnerships to provide expertise required to address SEs’ competency gaps. In addressing the non-financial capital requirements, they identified a key set of needs that represented barriers towards investment readiness. The pilot program focused on four modules of support for SEs, and following testing and workshops, AVPN created an online wizard, SE Development Toolkit to help SEs with profiling themselves to their stage of development, helping them identify their needs and then matching them to a set of resources available.
Social Enterprise Development Toolkit
LED BY: CREDIT SUISSE & VILLAGE CAPITAL
Founded in 2013, Khmer Water Supply Holdings (KWSH) is a social enterprise on a mission to increase safe water access by delivering piped water to remote areas in Cambodia where four million people still do not have reliable sources of clean water in their homes. KWSH needed a new CRM/ERP system, but off-the-shelf solutions weren’t suitable and the company didn’t have the capital necessary to hire a vendor for a custom build. Committed to providing hands-on strategic support, Insitor Partners, a shareholder in KWSH since its establishment, recognized the challenge and introduced KWSH to Swisscontact’s RISE Platform, whose technical assistance (TA) financing solutions were well suited to help KWSH overcome their scaling challenges.
Scaling Social Business in Southeast Asia
LED BY: SWISSCONTACT CAMBODIA & INSITOR PARTNERS
Globally, the funds required to achieve the SDGs fall well short of the total global aid budget, with an estimated funding gap of USD2.5 trillion. Frontier Brokers is part of the Scaling Frontier Innovation program, an initiative of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s innovationXchange, which supports enterprises to scale their development impact in the Asia-Pacific. The Network is advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through innovation led by social entrepreneurship and investment for impact. Frontier Brokers is a network of 7 impact investment firms implementing projects to stimulate more appropriate types of capital reaching social enterprises. The firms range from NGOs to investment management firms and its members include firms like Athena Global Alliance, Brightlight Impact Advisory, Good Return, Investing for Good Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), Palladium and Secondmuse.
Frontier Brokers
LED BY: GOOD RETURN & IMPACT INVESTMENT EXCHANGE
CASVI, collaborating with 86 financial institutions, listed companies, academia and policy research institutions,initiated “Discovering Social Value 99 in China” in 2016 to address the challenge in not having a common language to promote sustainable finance across sectors and markets. The project has successfully established a quantitative assessment system to evaluate listed companies’ contribution to sustainable development in terms of their economic, social and environmental performance. Building on the assessment model and results, CASVI, together with pro bono experts, developed a series of products – social value credit rating, ranking, indices and assessment reports.
Discovering Social Value 99
LED BY: CHINA ALLIANCE OF SOCIAL VALUE INVESTMENT(CASVI) & CHINA GLOBAL PHILANTHROPY INSTITUTE
