The Thomson Reuters Foundation champions economies that are equitable, participatory, and sustainable, with a focus on environmental respect. Impact investing is crucial for addressing social and environmental inequities but remains underutilized in Southeast Asia. To bridge this gap, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) partnered with TrustLaw, the TRF's global pro bono service, to enhance understanding of local impact investing regulations in 7 different countries in Southeast Asia: Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines. Special thanks go to A&O Shearman, DFDL, Mayer Brown, MahWengKwai & Associates, and SyCip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan for their pro-bono support. This guide aims to assist social enterprises, incubators, and investors in navigating local regulations and fostering greater investment in regional startups and their social missions.
We featured ANDE members and their entrepreneurs in our communications series ‘Exploring Digitalization Journeys’. This blog meets entrepreneurs of Mercy Corps Indonesia, an international non-profit organization founded in 1979 that has helped people in vulnerable areas; 42 countries and has helped more than 19 million people improve their quality of life.
Southeast Asia is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, with a total GDP of over USD 2.7 trillion. However, its progress is threatened by the increasingly adverse impacts of climate change. Entrepreneurship has a leading role in developing solutions to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. This report evaluates the current support ecosystem for climate and environmental entrepreneurs in six developing Southeast Asian countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Through ANDE's data collection and analysis, this report offers insights on the set of organizations supporting entrepreneurs that aim to address climate change mitigation, adaptation, and non-climate related environmental protection challenges.
"This study highlights the importance of strengthening social entrepreneurship to support both economic growth and individual prosperity in Indonesia. The mission of social entrepreneurship is to make solicing social issues a part of business. By involving the private sector in solving social and economic issues, social entrepreneurship has great potential to improve Indonesians' livelihoods in a lasting way."
"This document presents ENERGIA’s four-year journey to create and upscale womencentric energy enterprises that sell safe, reliable and affordable energy solutions to low-income consumers in underserved areas. ENERGIA works with partner organizations in seven countries in an effort to develop and test new, disruptive business models and approaches that promote women as energy entrepreneurs. This document is a self-reflection, undertaken collectively by the WEE programme coordinator, the partner organizations and the ENERGIA International Secretariat. As a learning document, it seeks to analyse the various strategies with which we have worked in different contexts. It draws out common features of the most promising ones, as well as lessons from efforts that did not go so well, or even failed completely. Since documentation on women’s energy entrepreneurship is only beginning to emerge, wherever relevant, we have crosschecked our lessons with those from women’s entrepreneurship in other sectors."
"In the second of a two-part series focused on SAOs in Indonesia, this study by Angel Investment Network Indonesia (ANGIN) examines the performance, expectations, and challenges faced by SAOs, with particular reference to whether SAOs are meeting the expectations of entrepreneurs and investors and how gaps in expectation can be addressed.
This report also places a special focus on how SAOs support women entrepreneurs and the reasons for the gender gap in SAO activities. A multitude of factors discourage women entrepreneurs from applying and participating in SAO programs, from difficulty in finding SAO programs targeting sectors, location, or business stage, where a higher proportion of women entrepreneurs operate, through to a lack of women engaged in SAO programs as mentors, trainers, SAO staff or as participating entrepreneurs. The intensive time commitment during the program and competitive culture could also be contributing factors.
The report concludes with a practical framework that SAOs can use to advance their mission and recommendations to promote gender inclusion in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Placing a greater emphasis on diversifying mentors, trainers and SAO staff, explicitly encouraging female candidates to apply and designing more flexible programs that allow women to balance SAO program participation with household responsibilities could encourage more women to apply."