Updates from January, 2012

• Identifying the Next Steps for Impact Investing

  Jocelyn Ling 1:01 pm on January 28, 2012 | 2 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: impact (17), impact investing (10), social enterprise (2)

  A report by Credit Suisse and the Schwab Foun­da­tion for Social Entre­pre­neur­ship was released this week on the topic of impact invest­ing at the World Eco­nomic Forum’s annual meet­ing (Davos). A great overview of the cur­rent land­scape, it is worth a read, par­tic­u­larly Mark Kramer’s and Sir Richard Bran­son’s inter­views and com­ments on the sector.

  Investing_for_impact Credit Suisse — Schwab Report

  The report lead me down an inter­est­ing thought path on the “next steps” of the sector…

  Evi­dence:  The report high­lights sev­eral suc­cess­ful social enter­prise mod­els that are part of Schwab’s net­work. My per­sonal favourite was Bam Aquino of Hapinoy in the Philip­pines — invest­ment funds that cre­ates sus­tain­able dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels and busi­ness devel­op­ment strate­gies to empower for­merly iso­lated and infor­mal sec­tors of the Fil­ipino econ­omy. The report above, com­ple­ments the Data Dri­ven JP Morgan-GIIN report, that drills drown into the num­bers and break­down of social enter­prise in dif­fer­ent sectors.

  As a next step, I would love to see a report that focusses more on the acces­si­bil­ity and avail­abil­ity of invest­ments in the space — from an investors per­spec­tive. Com­ing from an asset-management back­ground, I have devel­oped a strong belief that under­stand­ing the invest­ment is just as impor­tant as know­ing your invest­ment options. Cur­rently, main-stream investor’s expo­sure of ‘social’ in invest­ments are SRI offer­ings — they need to be edu­cated on dif­fer­ent entry points and impact invest­ing prod­uct offer­ings rang­ing from an insti­tu­tional and pri­vate client per­spec­tive. A great start­ing point to this step is Impact Asset’s 50: A list­ing of Impact Fund Man­agers.

  Fail­ure: With the indus­try in a growth stage, as great as it is to know the suc­cesses and the land­scape, it is just as impor­tant to know the fail­ures. Where did we go wrong? What worked? How did you man­age to pivot? How do you pri­or­i­tize your mis­sion and your finances? When did you know the time to scale? There is such a stigma with fail­ure in the non-profit/charity world. This stigma should NOT be car­ried for­ward into the impact investing/social enter­prise sec­tor. Fail­ure is a gift — and the abil­ity to speak freely to learn from them, should be embraced by this sec­tor. A won­der­ful exam­ple of embrac­ing fail­ure is the EWB Canada’s Fail­ure Reports. I would love to see a sim­i­lar ini­tia­tive in the impact invest­ing sec­tor. Even inter­nally within orga­ni­za­tions — as a start.

  Road-Map: There is a wealth of infor­ma­tion on impact invest­ing that has been churned up within the last few years or so. The issue is know­ing where to look: from fund­ing social enter­prises to exit­ing an invest­ment. A nat­ural next step to this would be for var­i­ous stake­hold­ers to share their “how-tos” and points of con­sid­er­a­tion in the impact sec­tor. Some orga­ni­za­tions have already begun to pave the way for this, but what we need is for more road-maps to appear so at the very least, when you’re at the start­ing line — you have a gen­eral sense of direc­tion on where to go.

   

   

• 20 influential female leaders + 20 emerging young women = 40 inspired women

  Jocelyn Ling 1:05 pm on January 19, 2012 | 2 comments Permalink | Reply
  

  *The post below was orig­i­nally pub­lished on Lev­oLeague on Dec 5th, 2011

  Note: I had the plea­sure of co-organizing the event I wrote up below, and it turned out to be one of the most inspir­ing nights in my young pro­fes­sional career. Many thanks to the team at YWiB as well as all the atten­dees for being so hon­est and open. 

  ***

  “Sto­ries set the inner life into motion, and this is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant where the inner life is fright­ened, wedged, or cor­nered. Story greases the hoists and pul­leys, it causes adren­a­line to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trou­ble, cuts for us fine wide doors in pre­vi­ously blank walls, open­ings that lead to the dream­land, that lead to love and learn­ing, that lead us back to our own real lives as know­ing wild­ish women.”

  —Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Sto­ries are how peo­ple make sense of their worlds. As a child, we spon­ta­neously play out sto­ries on who we hope to become and how peo­ple relate to one another. As teenagers, we con­tin­u­ously explore our own sto­ries and oth­ers in order to under­stand our ever-expanding world. As adults, the sto­ries that we tell and fall in love with are the ones we value most in this world. In a very real sense, sto­ries are a win­dow into how we per­ceive the world around us and ulti­mately, influ­ences our humanity.

  It is through the power of sto­ries that Young Women in Busi­ness (YWiB) brought together 20 influ­en­tial women lead­ers and 20 upcom­ing young women for an evening of shared val­ues, fears and hopes in Van­cou­ver, Canada this past weekend.

  The 40 women came from a myr­iad of back­grounds: high pro­file Cana­dian politi­cians. Moth­ers. Part­ners of legal and finan­cial firms. Trail-blazers. Suc­cess­ful social entre­pre­neurs. Aspir­ing young pro­fes­sion­als. And above all, life­long learn­ers. The vision for the evening was to con­nect those who have paved the oppor­tu­ni­ties fac­ing young women today, with those who have the eager­ness to make a dif­fer­ence in their communities.

  

  Ques­tions posed to the both gen­er­a­tional ends of the con­ver­sa­tion included:

  • What has been one of your most vul­ner­a­ble moments?
  • What do you not like being stereo­typed as?
  • In one sen­tence, what would you wish most for your future self?
  • What do you look for in a busi­ness part­ner? how about a per­sonal relationship?
  • What are com­po­nents of a healthy rela­tion­ship? (busi­ness, men­tor­ship, roman­tic relationship)
  • What will be dif­fer­ent in your life in exactly 1 year?

  As the night started, each women shared gen­uinely her story and how she got to where she is. Sev­eral key trends and themes emerged:

  1) On work and lead­ing a bal­anced life

  “Our (older) gen­er­a­tion over­did it. We over­com­pen­sated for our weak­nesses and gen­der when we should have been own­ing it. We pounded away and sac­ri­ficed too many things. Please be smart on how you work.”

  “Work with peo­ple who have a value base.”

  “Your why is more impor­tant than your fear. Women have to think big­ger and take more risks.”

  2) On health

  “Watch­ing some­one die is one of the best and worst things in life. It puts every­thing into per­spec­tive. Being alive and healthy is a priv­i­lege. Cher­ish it while you can.”

  “ Do not ever ever give up on a bal­anced life.”

  3) On inter-generational shar­ing and mentoring

  “My whole life has been spent being spot­ted and men­tored by other intel­li­gent men and
  women. It’s not being a man or a woman, it’s about being pre­sentable, intel­li­gent and know­ing what you’re talk­ing about.”

  “Deci­sions that are com­ple­mented by men AND women are bet­ter. Include men in con­ver­sa­tions and remem­ber to make sure your that voice is heard.”

  As atten­dees left for the night, each walked out a lit­tle more coura­geous, a lit­tle more hum­bled and a lit­tle more inspired by the sto­ries that were shared over last the pre­vi­ous two hours. The salon was par­tic­u­larly a beau­ti­ful reminder on the strength of inter-generational rela­tion­ships. When we start shar­ing from a place that is vul­ner­a­ble, we start to see each generation’s defin­ing moments — mak­ing us lis­ten closely to peo­ple around us and more impor­tantly, to ourselves.

   

• (No)Where // (Now)Here

  Jocelyn Ling 11:59 am on November 28, 2011 | 2 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: inspiration (12), motivation (9), peace (4), personal (9)

  Just dis­cov­ered an incred­i­ble pho­tog­ra­pher and his web­site: 365q.ca. Thought I would share a cou­ple of my favourite pic­tures I find inspir­ing. Enjoy!

  

  

  

   

• Unleashing Data for Development

  Jocelyn Ling 12:58 pm on September 29, 2011 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration (8), data, impact (17), world (12), worldbank

  *This post was orig­i­nally pub­lished on http://www.socialearth.org on Jul 18, 2011

  There are three things about devel­op­ment data that you need to know: 1) It is beau­ti­ful; 2) There is a hid­den story within each com­bi­na­tion; and 3) It needs to be set free.

  Last year, the World Bank released it’s prized pos­ses­sion of data – one that tells the sto­ries of eco­nomic, socio and polit­i­cal real­i­ties around the world. This is a push to “democ­ra­tize devel­op­ment data” and embrace its open infor­ma­tion pol­icy. It’s absolutely incred­i­ble what has been done with the data and I wanted to high­light some of the ini­tia­tives that have been born out of this:

  1) http://data.worldbank.org/

  This is the main Knowl­edge Bank where you can infor­ma­tion from poverty rates to the aver­age life expectancy of a coun­try. Data is sorted by topic, coun­tries, indi­ca­tors, sec­tors and the World Bank even made a neat fea­ture of key devel­op­ment indi­ca­tors around the world. It cov­ers over 200 coun­ties and in some cases, dates back as far as 50 years.

  The data is updated reg­u­larly and as you can see from the screen­shot below, you can even find infor­ma­tion on the newest coun­try in the world – South Sudan! The site includes the Bank’s widely-used and extremely use­ful datasets: the 2010 World Devel­op­ment Indi­ca­tors (WDI), Africa Devel­op­ment Indi­ca­tors (ADI), Global Eco­nomic Mon­i­tor (GEM) and Global Devel­op­ment Finance.

  

  2) Apps for Development

  With the launch of the the above resource, the World Bank orga­nized an Apps for Devel­op­ment Com­pe­ti­tion – bring­ing together the best ideas from devel­op­ers and data to cre­ate use­ful soft­ware appli­ca­tions that is related to the Mil­le­nium Devel­op­ment Goals (MDGs). The com­pe­ti­tion was a tremen­dous suc­cess and the Bank received apps from 36 coun­tries: 30 of the 107 final sub­mis­sions from Africa. You can check out the win­ners from this com­pe­ti­tion here.

  A side spin­off from this com­pe­ti­tion was also an Inter­na­tional Day Hackathon on Dec 4th last year where devel­op­ers write appli­ca­tions using open data to sup­port and encour­age the adop­tion of open data poli­cies by the world’s gov­ern­ments. My favorite appli­ca­tion is the San Fran­cisco Crimespot­ting – an inter­ac­tive map of crimes in San Fran­cisco and a tool for under­stand­ing crime in cities. Help­ing keep peo­ple safe with open data. Amazing!

  3) Map­ping for Results

  This Plat­form pro­vides detailed infor­ma­tion about the World Bank’s work in poverty alle­vi­a­tion and devel­op­ment around the world. It pro­vides access to inter­ac­tive maps that high­lights loca­tions of the bank’s projects around the world and involved releas­ing data pro­vided by gov­ern­ments and other entities.

  

  4) Data on the Go!

  The World Bank is bring­ing acces­si­bil­ity of data to a whole new level by pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion on an iPhone app. They have six apps ( 4 pub­lished and 2 in the pipelines) that are being devel­oped and the inter­face and usabil­ity for the data is just incred­i­ble. My per­sonal favorite is the clas­sic Datafinder – an app that lets you access 50 years of WB data on global eco­nomic indi­ca­tors that can eas­ily be shared in pre­sen­ta­tions, research and projects. Two more apps are being released in August 2011 – The World Bank at a Glance and the World Bank’s Finances.

  Data is truly beau­ti­ful and with the world’s devel­op­ment data at your fin­ger­tips, we can use, ana­lyze and even crit­i­cize.. but the only thing we shouldn’t do is ignore it. The video below is an exam­ple at how mag­i­cal data can be. 4 min­utes – 200 coun­tries, 200 years by world renown econ­o­mist – Hans Rosling.