The very survival of some communities depends on their ability to adapt to the effects of climate change. Meanwhile, the cost of financing adaptation is soaring, while private sources fund just a tiny portion of this. Enter impact investing.
When organisations select their preferred impact metrics in isolation from others, it wastes time and makes it difficult to compare results with others. A promising solution: indices.
PLUS: Willicroft targets new markets with €2m raise; UK’s CDFI lending jumps by a third in one year; appetite for impact investing rises; Lendahand crowdfunding platform shifts gear; and much more.
BRAC International Microfinance – which provides financial services to ‘bottom-of-the-pyramid’ customers, particularly women living in poverty – set to “grow significantly” and expand into three new countries over the next five years.
Small, low interest loans to the poorest people can transform lives and level up communities, but traditional microfinance has never taken off in the UK. What’s more, Brexit dealt it a near-fatal blow.
“Everything starts with imagination,” the Nobel prize laureate says, calling on social entrepreneurs to follow the lead of science fiction creators – and advising budding intrapreneurs to be “outrageously bold” in their ideas.
Bridges Fund Management’s Michele Giddens on the Polish tea room meeting that changed her career path – and why talk of recycled yoghurt pots has helped make her organisation what it is today.
PLUS: Impact bond firsts in Cambodia and Palestine, Big Issue Invest backs lottery business, Bamboo Capital Partners invests in Indonesian peer-to-peer lending platform, VisionFund raises £10m for microfinance – and more.
The Berlin-based co-founder of Yunus Social Business on a lightbulb moment in Bangladesh that showed how social enterprises can adapt their business models to the needs of the poorest.
