Dear AVPN supporters, Meet AVPN on this year’s Road Show Oct 15th to 23rd!
AVPN has come a long way in the last 20 months, building on the reputation of EVPA, our sister organisation, to having more than 130 members. It is now time for us to move to the next phase of AVPN’s development, which also marks the transition of AVPN’s first CEO, Simon Chadwick from CEO to a non-executive director role. Simon did a great job in overseeing the network’s membership growth, the inaugural annual conference and also the smooth set-up to what the organisation is today. We wish him the best in his new activities and look forward to his continued involvement with us.
Stepping into the CEO role is Naina Batra, who will be familiar to many from the social sector in India. She was formerly with the Monitor Group, and has over 15 years of commercial experience. She is actively engaging with Simon and the AVPN team on the transitional issues and will formally assume the CEO role in mid-September. I am confident that she will be a great fit for the organisation and the programmes that we will be implementing for the future.
I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Andrew Muirhead, who will be joining us officially in Singapore next January as Executive Vice Chairman. Andrew brings with him a wealth of experience in venture philanthropy, having launched the successful Inspiring Scotland 5 years ago, as well as serving as an EVPA Director since 2010. We are certain that he will help the VP sector in Asia grow further based upon his experience in Europe and his commitment to the AVPN mission.
October will be very exciting as the new senior management hit the road with Fiona Halton of Pilotlight (UK) and Patsian Low of National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre in Singapore. We will be travelling to Mumbai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and China. We will be discussing how best to leverage on the depth and breadth of human capital across Asia to create greater social impact through our series of workshops and roundtable discussions. We are also keen to introduce Naina and Andrew to you, so please be sure to come to the road show on “Mobilising Human Capital”.
Also in this newsletter are the findings from the AVPN members survey that we conducted during July and August. We are always trying to get more feedback from our members and key prospects on the industry: what obstacles are you facing, how can we help? Your active engagement with us is extremely important as we progress on the road of expanding the practice of venture philanthropy / social investment across Asia. The opportunities are great, but the implementation has numerous challenges, and we strongly feel that by working together each of us has a much better chance of success of making the social impact we want to achieve.
I hope to see many of you during the Asian road show next month!
Best,
Doug MillerChairman, AVPN
