Above and Beyond a Grantmaking Exercise: How an Evolving Partnership Can Create Better Futures for Girls in Cambodia
5 min read
As social issues like unequal access to education transcends across multiple silos, like-minded stakeholders need to partner and move collectively to create impact. Find out how Atlassian Foundation and Room To Read are doing just that, and how you can do so too.
Closing the Expectation Gap
The question: “Where does women’s time go?” is significant. How we invest in their time and resources will not only shape communities, but also economies. Yet, we are only working at half-potential. The COVID-19 pandemic is a defining moment for social investors to ensure the decades of development gains do not go to waste. There is no better time for action than the present.
Convergence Tracks Gender Lens Investing in Blended Finance
4 min read
Advancing gender equality is key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To improve women and girls’ access to, and control over, resources and capital, money must move towards projects that integrate gender comprehensively – from design to delivery and assessment.
Fund Resilience: Create Systemic Change by Working at the Nexus of Climate and Gender
6 min read
COVID-19 has made very visible how climate change will affect us all on a global scale, which has stirred renewed energy to “build back better” through climate resiliency. Some of us, however, will be harder hit by climate change than others.
Gender and Climate – Scaling Impact with a Cross-Cutting Agenda
4 min read
“COVID 19 has been seen as a test run for a major climate event. The parallels are clear: both are silent threats of global scale, they move quickly through borders, they do not discriminate between rich or poor, young or old or race or religion. Both are existential threats against humanity where complete solutions are still unclear. Although both threats are known, we have not taken them seriously enough and hence this urgent call to action,” says En Lee, Head of Sustainable and Impact Investments Asia, LGT.
Gender Lens Investing Series: C4D Partners’ Ecosystem-Building Approach
4 min read
Gender lens investing entails far more than investing in women. By unleashing women’s economic participation, be it as entrepreneurs, employees, or others, there will be economic and social benefits to not only women, families and communities, but also to their country’s economic development.
Gender Lens Investing Series: Investree Pairs Fintech with Debt Financing to Support SMEs
As SMEs move into the digital space, women entrepreneurs are the face and consumers at the forefront using the services and products in this space. With women making up nearly a third of borrowers, Investree sees increasing the mix of women entrepreneurs as part of their mission as a company to increase impact – providing solutions for the underserved market.
Gender Lens Investing Series: Patamar Capital on Empowering Women in Portfolios
5 min read
At the end of the day, I believe we all share the same underlying goal of gender equality, and while it’s easy to get distracted by all the details, it’s important to remind ourselves of that!
Gender Lens Investing Series: SEAF on Busting Misconceptions with a Proven Investment Strategy
Investing in women-led or owned businesses is not enough to achieve women’s economic empowerment. However, that is still not enough to achieve women’s economic empowerment. We need to strengthen existing initiatives that support women economic empowerment and/or address any discriminatory practices. In fact, companies that commit to strong internal gender equality and continuous operational improvements will be superior business performers, both financially and socially.
Gender Matters in Business: Five Takeaways for Corporates from the AVPN Virtual Conference 2020
6 min read
2020 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action – the UN Women-led blueprint to advance women’s rights, when women empowerment should have achieved significant success. We are far from that, and will actually need another century to reach gender parity. That is certainly not helped by the ongoing pandemic, which threatens to negate even the limited gains made. Across every sphere, from education and health to economy and security, the impacts of COVID-19 have been exacerbated for women and girls.
Impact Management
Why is impact management not well understood? “These metrics and resources seem to complicate things, more than help in the due diligence process” seems to be a key concern among stakeholders along the value chain, from investors to enterprise to beneficiaries. With impact metrics and outcomes differing across different actors, what the investor thinks as an effective framework may not work as well for the enterprise or beneficiary group.
In the Fight for Gender Equality, Nutrition Is Key
5 min read
Why Investment in Nutrition is Critical? Malnutrition is a global crisis. Poor nutrition has far-reaching implications. On an individual level, it causes people to be more susceptible to illnesses due to weakened immunities. From a wider perspective, malnutrition strains healthcare systems, and causes losses in human capital and workplace productivity. During his sharing, Martin Short, CEO of The Power of Nutrition emphasised that malnutrition costs an estimated US$3.5 trillion annually worldwide.
India in the Time of COVID-19: How Women in Local Governance Can Make a Difference
8 min read
Women’s representation in local governments is essential and has proven to be more impactful than bodies with unequal gender balance. One of the reasons is that women leaders have the same kind of preferences and development priorities as the people in their communities. The following article deals with the situation of women in local governance in India and gives a concrete example of how local governments with an increased influence of women are effective in crises like the current Covid-19 pandemic.
Investing in the She Economy – the Largest Arbitrage Opportunity of our Generation
5 min read
Virginia’s work with what she calls “the She economy” spans seven years, after she founded Lean In China with a group of friends–starting what became one of China’s leading nonprofits for women. Coming from a career in law and finance, where she worked on investments in the emerging markets for almost a decade, covering more than $30 billion worth of transactions, the potential for business to grow into — or shall we say, lean into — the gender space continues to amaze her.
Java Mountain Coffee Deal Share Impact Trip Report
4 min read
Java Mountain Coffee is an Indonesian social enterprise committed to empowering women farmers and providing farm fresh sustainably-sourced Indonesian coffee.
Putting Girls Front and Center: Empower’s Girls Advisory Council Shapes a Better Future
7 min read
To fully empower girls and young women, EMpower’s Country Director for India, Nisha Dhawan, tells us how EMpower – The Emerging Markets Foundation embraces “participatory philanthropy”, anchoring the opportunity for girls to write their own futures through their Girls Advisory Council in India.
Scale Climate Action by Engaging With Women’s Organizations: Why Climate and Gender Funders Must Work Together
4 min read
Global frameworks for climate action, including but not limited to the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, have recognized that they must respect and promote gender equality and women’s rights to be effective and truly transformative. This requires climate finance architecture to be gender-responsive and inclusive to take into account solutions that individuals and organizations that have knowledge about gender and are working toward gender equality.
Six Memorable Quotes from #AVPN2020
5 min read
With the COVID-19 pandemic, AVPN took its Annual Conference fully online for the first time ever. It was the largest showing to date, attracting a record 7,500 participants from 103 markets. The five-day event saw the social investment community in Asia pledge their commitment to advance social impact, reinforce their connections to one another, and share stories of innovation and inspiration. Here we share five memorable takeaways from the Conference.
The 4-Pronged Effect When You Invest In India’s Allied & Healthcare Professionals
5 min read
Allied and Healthcare Professionals (AHPs) make a significant contribution to the healthcare delivery system. During any health crisis, they are the front warriors who help to scale up healthcare services under the supervision of Doctors and Nurses. Despite a huge demand for their services, this sector is highly fragmented in India mainly due to the absence of a central regulatory authority.
Why Philippines is Ripe for Gender Investments – A Spotlight on Ayala Foundation
The Philippines has achieved highest gender parity in Southeast. Yet, gender lens investing has received a lot less attention. By working with philanthropy networks, investors can engage with programmes that support and foster long-term relationships within communities
