The Impact World this Week: 11 September 2025
Your quick guide to the most interesting news snippets about social enterprise, impact investment and mission-driven business around the world from the Pioneers Post team. This week: Palestinian beer hits UK shops thanks to social enterprise partnership, AVPN 2026 host city announced, ice cream pioneers call upon Unilever to ‘free Ben and Jerry’s’ – and more.
Palestine: Beer made by a brewery in the Israeli-occupied West Bank hit the shelves of UK supermarkets yesterday thanks to a partnership with Scottish social enterprise Brewgooder. Taybeh brewery has been unable to export freely because of checkpoint delays, customs restrictions and soaring operational costs under Israeli occupation. But, Taybeh’s Madees Khoury, the Middle East’s first and only female brewmaster (pictured above with Brewgooder co-founders James Hughes and Alan Mahon), travelled to the UK to create a new lager, called Sun and Stone, at Brewgooder’s brewery. The social enterprise is brewing the beer in solidarity with Taybeh at zero profit, with proceeds going in part to Taybeh in part being donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee, a charity which supports conflict-affected communities across the Middle East, including the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Sun and Stone is available in 1,600 Co-op stores. In June, Co-op members voted to “cease all trading with Israel” at the organisation’s AGM.
Global: The private sector cannot, and will not, provide the majority of developing countries’ climate adaptation funding needs. That’s according to a report published last week by the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance, which is led by the Zurich Foundation and brings together nine NGOs and research organisations. Adaptation Finance and the Private sector: Opportunities and challenges for developing countries argues that the potential of blended finance to unlock significant sums of private sector investment has been significantly overestimated and developed countries need to find ways to provide international public funding, via development aid, development finance institutions, multilateral investors and government-backed initiatives such as the Adaptation Fund or Green Climate Fund. It recommends developed countries immediately end fossil fuel subsidies and enact “polluter pays” levies — whereby the entity responsible for causing environmental damage is financially responsible for the costs of preventing, controlling, and remediating their pollution — to radically increase the amount of international public funding available for adaptation.
USA: “Free Ben and Jerry’s” is the call from the ice-cream company’s co-founders, as current owner Unilever plans to list its ice-cream business on the stock market. In an open letter published on Tuesday, Ben and Jerry’s co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield said the brand “has been silenced by Unilever, particularly when the brand has tried to speak out about social justice and unjust wars”. The pair, who no longer have a financial interest in Ben and Jerry’s or any formal role in the company, sold to Unilever for US$326m in 2000. Cohen told Sky News this week he would give back the money he received in the sale if it meant the brand could be independent. This is the latest in a series of battles between the companies, including a number of legal disputes relating to agreements in the sale deal designed to protect the ice-cream brand’s mission and strong stance on social issues. In March 2025 Ben and Jerry’s accused Unilever of sacking the ice-cream brand’s chief executive for refusing to “oversee the dismantling” of its progressive values.
UK and Republic of Ireland: Shoppers heading to Lush stores last week were met with closed doors and a sign bearing the message: “Stop starving Gaza – we are closed in solidarity.” The cosmetic brand’s shops, website and factories closed in the UK on 3 September, and in the Republic of Ireland on 4 September. In a statement, the company said: “Whilst Lush is losing a day of takings, this also means that the UK government is losing a day of tax contributions from Lush and our customers. We hope they too hear the message our closure sends, with more government action needed to bring an immediate stop to the death and destruction, including an end to arms sales from the UK.” A spokesperson told Pioneers Post the closure had triggered an organised email campaign opposing the action, which its IT department believes originated in North America. “The messages of support in our inboxes far outweighed the negative,” the spokesperson added. Watermelon Slice, a soap produced to raise funds for organisations in Palestine, including those delivering medical support and child mental health services, has been the most successful single issue fundraising product in the history of the company, which the firm said indicates how strongly its customers feel.
England and Wales: How can place-based investing to support locally-defined priorities be balanced with fiduciary duties in local government pension funds? That’s the question explored in a new white paper published by impact advisory firm The Good Economy, titled Scaling-Up Local Investing for Place-based Impact: A Strategic Framework and Guidance for LGPS. Recommendations include moving away from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to adapt to local characteristics,active collaboration between the Local Government Pension Scheme and a range of its stakeholders; and the development of a common impact reporting standard ensuring consistency, comparability and transparency. The paper was sponsored by the Local Government Pension Scheme, which holds nearly £400bn of assets today and which is projected to reach £1tn by 2040, in response to government reforms for pension funds and local government aimed at improving and boosting local investment.
- Read more: What is place-based impact investing?
UK: Investment service providers will be invited to pitch to run a portfolio of up to £50m of philanthropic funding with a mandate influenced by an advisory panel of young adults. The Endowments Investing Challenge is run by The Blagrave Trust, The Children’s Society, Cripplegate Foundation, Friends Provident Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Vivensa Foundation. The Impact Investing Institute is a supporter. A six-person ‘Future Generations Panel’ has been put together after more than 750 18 to 25-year-olds applied. The participants will be paid £200 a day over seven days to help shape the portfolio during the coming months, with the aim of prioritising long-term positive impacts on future generations alongside financial returns. “Through the advisory panel and a survey, we’re bringing the opinions of those normally excluded from decision-making to the table,” said Danielle Walker Palmour, director of Friends Provident Foundation.
Asia: Private capital has become an essential means of promoting long-term, sustainable value in Asia, complementing governmental and philanthropic initiatives to address urgent challenges. That’s according to a report from the Hong Kong Financial Services Development Council, published during AVPN’s Global Conference being held in Hong Kong this week. Showcasing how Impact Capital Makes a Difference argues Hong Kong is strategically positioned to accelerate and lead the development of impact investment in Asia, and explores themes it says are likely to influence the next phase of development of the sector, which include: aligning climate and social objectives; driving consistent standards of disclosure, measurement and accountability; and the evolving role of global financial centres in directing capital towards long-term, inclusive value.
- Read more: Hong Kong can be a ‘super connector’ for impact investing – financial secretary at AVPN conference
Asia: AVPN’s 2026 annual conference will be hosted in New Delhi, India from 25-27 August at the Bharat Mandapam venue. The Asian impact investing network’s CEO Naina Subberwal Batra announced the news at the closing of its 2025 conference which took place this week in Hong Kong. It will be AVPN’s 13th annual get-together, and marks the network’s 15th anniversary. Subberwal Batra said: “India has long been one of the most vibrant centres in the AVPN community. India’s philanthropic ambition, policy innovation and grassroots resilience offer a blueprint for how Asia can lead the world with both scale and purpose.”
Figure of the week: R$18bn (£2.5bn) is expected to be available for investment funds directed at projects linked to the green economy in Brazil, thanks to the country’s development bank’s new ‘Chamada de Clima’ (Climate Call) initiative. The Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development’s (BNDES) will allocate up to R$5bn to the initiative, which is expected to leverage an additional R$13bn in private capital. BNDES said projects targeted by the initiative include those involving the “decarbonisation of industrial processes, energy transition, infrastructure for climate adaptation, technology for green agriculture, ecological restoration, reforestation and forest conservation.”
- Read more: Rethinking impact finance in Medellín: five hot ideas from Latimpacto’s annual conference
Top image: Alan Mahon (co-founder, Brewgooder), Madees Khoury (operations manager, Taybeh Brewing Company) and James Hughes (co-founder, Brewgooder) present their new Sun and Stone lager (credit: Brewgooder).
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