2022 Year In Review
As the calendar year winds down into a festive holiday season (Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, Ōmisoka, and others), we are grateful for what a tremendous year 2022 has been at Angels of Impact.
Women Impacting Social Enterprises (WISE 2022)
This year, we welcomed two new enterprises into the Women Impacting Social Enterprise (WISE) Program: Aliet Green and Bote Central.
Based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Aliet Green is a producer and manufacturer of high-end organic coconut sugar. The social enterprise addresses poverty by employing, supporting, and training small-scale farmers in the region. For three months, the Angels of Impact team, Regula Schegg of Circulate Capital, and Janice Tang of Deloitte, worked with Founder and CEO, Lastiana Yuliandari, and her Chief Financial Officer to prepare the business for their new product line.
“You trained the two of us, but later there will be 1000 farmers who also learned. It will improve their livelihood as well.” — Lastiana Yuliandari, Founder of Aliet Green
Bote Central is an eco-friendly social enterprise producing coffee and training a community of Filipino farmers to move up the value chain in their coffee production. Alongside the long-time Angels of Impact team, Vivek Sharma of Credit Suisse and dedicated volunteer Sagar Rathi from DBS Bank supported Co-Founder Vie Reyes and her Chief Financial Officer Alyanna Reyes in preparing Bote Central for the next stage of business growth.
“Angels of Impact was able to come up with a group. A team. Organizing all of these people together so we can do this activity…. I can’t imagine how I’d be able to do it. But Angels of Impact did it. I see that there is a lot of respect for Angels of Impact with how people volunteer their time.” — Vie Reyes, Co-Founder & CEO of Bote Central
Funding
In addition to welcoming new enterprises into the fold, we reinforced existing relationships with follow-up funding.
- Notably, Color Silk received a second round of funding from our Evergreen Fund to train more women, increase production and add to the collection of new ikat designs. Check out Color Silk’s products here.
- Through a generous grant from the SWIFT Foundation, seven social enterprises from the WISE 2021 cohort also received grants totaling USD 35,000. These enterprises focus on indigenous populations–their rights, cultural heritage, land preservation, and elevating indigenous voices–and include:
- Hear & Found
- SAYA brand
- Maranao Collectibles
- Chie Dupudupa
- TORAJAMELO
- TAEC
- Wovencrafts
Click here to read the SWIFT Foundation Grant Report.
Events
- Beyond Environmental Social Governance (ESG): Laina curated and moderated the ASBN Live Panel: Beyond Impact Investing and ESG. Here, she addressed how restorative investing works toward tackling the financial inequity and oppression created by the pre-existing financial system and institutions around us.
Speakers for this event included Lynne Hoey, Chief Investment Officer @ Kataly Fund, Malia Lazu, CEO & Founder @ The Lazu Group (The Urban Labs), Laurika Harris-Kaye, and Changemaker, systems enthusiast and seeker.
Some key highlights of the panel?
- Marginalised communities are systematically excluded and underserved by the financial system.
- Traditional ESG investing often fails to address “social” aspects, namely institutional racism, which amounts to a loss of 16 trillion USD within the US economy.
- By deploying capital and building relationships with marginalised communities intentionally and strategically, restorative investing works towards achieving greater social equity.
Watch the full panel here: https://lnkd.in/g9XKnWhz
2. Transforming finance for social good: In September, Angels of Impact shared the stage with other impact-focused funds at the Transformative25 webinar. Named by Integrated Capital Investing, the Transformative 25 are 25 funds recognized each year that " demonstrate the power of integrated capital that is designed to reimagine the finance system to work for people and planet.” You can read more about the T25 here.
Angels of Impact joined three other restorative investment funds in this conversation:
- Mariela Cedeño, Chair of the Equitable Food Oriented Development Fund (EFOD)
- Stephen Nairne, Chief Investment Officer of Raven Indigenous Capital Partners
- Julianne Zimmerman, Managing Director, GP, of Reinventure Capital Fund
They spoke about strategies to leverage food systems and agriculture to create economic opportunities for disinvested communities, noting that trillions of dollars in potential impact in businesses to be generated IF capital for those enterprises can be unlocked.
Reflecting on this, Taj James, Partner at Full Capital Spectrum Partners, highlighted the work of Angels of Impact and its value in aligning capital with financial and impact outcomes. He underscored the importance of our work by offering funding and technical assistance.
“It is a small seed of a vast forest for impact creation.”
Watch the webinar here: https://lnkd.in/gWSwJna
Partnering Groups
We believe young people play a strong role in shaping a regenerative future. For a third sequential semester, students of the Yale-NUS Consulting Group came alongside Angels of Impact from August (2022) through November to analyze impact metrics and strategize best practices for collecting future impact with enterprises in our network. The team was led by Ashley Chin and Amogh Narain Aggarwal and also include Anirvin Narayan, Zhang Ruitong, Daniel Ng, and Sean Pang.
Well-Being and Equity (WE)( https://www.weintheworld.org/ )in the World is a global organization that partners with people and communities with lived experience of inequities and organizations in diverse sectors to advance intergenerational well-being and equity on a foundation of racial justice. WE in the World has been working to advance more equitable economies since 2020, including the development of tools and the launch of a engaging cooperative dozens of organizations and people with lived experiences of inequities. Angels of Impact has been engaged in the WE in the World network for the last few years and this year Madi Lommen from Angels of Impact team was appointed as a Junior Fellow at WE in the World for 6 months, where we worked together on speaking at events, fundraising, and strategic thinking. We look forward to our continued partnership in the coming year.
New to Our Team
We also welcomed many wonderful new faces this year. Huge shoutout to these ladies and gentlemen!
Adriana Mercier, Anjali Venketram, Carolyn Chan, Chan Jin Wei, Charlize Tan, Denise Wong, Diore Liu, Gail Wong, Janice Leong, Janice Tang, Kimberley Oliveiro, Nupur Agrawal Bhagat, Rachel Handoko, Regula Schegg, Sagar Rathi, Sonia Deshpande, and lastly, Wendy Yap.
To be honest, we are amazed by how much we have been able to accomplish with limited resources. Financially our work this year was possible with the generous support of Collis and Cyan Ta’eed from Envato and Hari Kumar from Lionrock Capital. With so many good-hearted folks volunteering their time and expertise, we were able to stretch our resources to do more. If you find our work to restore the racial wealth gap to marginalised communities through sustainable businesses compelling, please do reach out to us about how you can get involved. Email laina@angelsofimpact.com for more information.
