Building the next generation of gender-smart investors and SGBs in developing economies.
'Gender-Smart Investing Capacity Building' Grant Facility
Period of Implementation: January 2022 – January 2023
While the emerging market small and growing business (SGB) sector has made considerable gains in advancing gender equality, achieving systemic and sustainable change is not feasible without the mass prioritization of gender considerations by SGBs and the investors that support them. For investors, the process of leaping from why to how can pose roadblocks. Under this Capacity Building facility, these investors buy into the business, moral, and/or legal case for embedding gender into their portfolio, but they lack the technical know-how to build or incorporate gender into their investment thesis and processes. To apply to this facility, investors must have involved a third-party capacity development provider if the investor applicant does not provide such services (e.g. targeted mentoring; training based on women’s needs assessment, etc) in-house.
Bangladesh Angels enabled three cross-border SGBs to better quantify the impact the SGBs’ operations have on women in supply chains and women who use or benefit from their platform by planning for gender smart impact, collecting data, analyzing data, and reviewing and revising metrics and reporting.
Instituto de Cidadania Empresarial (ICE) trained and engaged strategic audiences of the Brazilian impact ecosystem on gender and race issues for companies, entrepreneurs and investors.
RENEW Capital built out the gender-smart capacity services of their in-country investment team as well as tested and refined a draft version of the SGB Gender Growth Acceleration (SG2X) Investment Playbook, which aims to provide investors and SGBs with a practical strategy to improve the performance of SGBs in Africa and empower women at scale.
Sweef Capital built and deployed a pilot tool, the Gender ROI™, with two SGBs, developing case studies to support its promotion and adoption, and adding to a best practices library to support gender action plans in Southeast Asia.
Yunus Social Business Colombia and Corewoman developed a gender-smart investing assessment and recommendations; proposing and designing a gender-smart strategy and indicators; and designing guidelines to identify business models, products and/or services that positively impact women and girls.
