Accelerating action in August, and news from the field

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Subject: Accelerating action in August, and news from the field

2X Global: Unlocking gender-smart capital at scale

Dear Friend,

August has been exciting on a number of levels. Just last week, 2X Global was announced as the grants management partner for USAID Climate Finance for Development Accelerator (USAID CFDA)'s Climate Gender Equity Fund (CGEF) 🙌. Launched with initial capital of US$6 million from USAID and Amazon, CGEF seeks to leverage at least US$60 million in capital at the nexus of climate and gender. 2X Global will manage the grant portfolio with the goal of increasing access to finance for women and girls on the frontlines of climate mitigation and adaptation.

This drive towards unlocking more gender-smart climate finance is timely and needed, given the stark climate warnings in the form of devastating wildfires in Maui and Canada, to scorching heat across Europe- all reminders of how high the stakes are.

In mid-month, at the Feminist Finance Forum in Bangkok, we partnered up with UNESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) to launch Women Investing for Women, an initiative to unlock gender-smart capital at scale in Asia-Pacific (APAC). We announced our collaboration to run two capacity-building programmes for female-led or gender balanced funds across APAC.

We also welcomed Robert Meloche to our team as Director of Partnerships and Impact. Rob is no stranger to 2X Global, having worked alongside us in his previous role as Head of Programmes at the Visa Foundation, where he deployed more than $200 million in gender-smart grants and investments. We are delighted to have him as a part of our team which now spans fourteen countries and nine time zones.

In other news, 2X Global Forum democratically elected its first two co-chairs – Zubaida Bai, President and CEO of the Grameen Foundation and Lelemba Phiri, Principal and Founder of the Africa Trust Group. The 2X Forum serves as a long-term strategic engagement pillar to bring the voices and insights of 2X Global’s broader and more diverse stakeholders to 2X leadership.

Keep reading for a round up of the latest and most insightful GLI news and knowledge.

In Community,

2X Global team

News from the field

Mainstreaming gender lens investing. Village Capital, with support from the Visa Foundation, outlines three steps to enhance the evaluation framework and improve scoring five-fold for women-led startups. The Asia Gender Network outlined principles to improve gender lens investing in philanthropy. Bridgespan Africa released research - a series of interviews with 25 stakeholders, including African GPs, to understand the challenges that African impact fund managers face in raising and deploying capital and to elevate locally rooted solutions. Micro lender Pro Mujer issued their first gender bond earlier this year - read about their experience and what they’re going for next. Prosper Africa, a U.S. trade and investment initiative, announces four new partnerships with African asset fund managers under their facility which will mobilise more than US$200 million in private capital. 2X Ignite GP Sprint alumni EG-Economic Empowerment Fund L.P., is one of the firms.

Gender and Climate Investing. In an era of increased climate induced migration this policy brief from UN Women makes recommendations on how to ensure safety of women and girls. Celebrated environmental scientist David Suzuki urges energy in the fight against climate change, saying “hope without action” is something the world cannot afford. Sobering statistics from our Annual Member Meeting host, the European Investment Bank (EIB) - just 3% of the nature-based solutions projects across the EU have received significant private sector funding. What are the stumbling blocks? They’re not what you might expect. As COP28 approaches, EIB’s latest climate survey, men and women are far apart in their views about whether female political leadership makes a positive difference to a country’s climate action while Emirati women are among those at the forefront of setting the agenda with regards to the energy transition and climate action.

Leadership, Culture and Policy. A new policy brief from the British Asian Trust examines the gap in female labour force participation worldwide and makes recommendations on what policymakers can do to reduce this gap. Meanwhile, Sonya Sawtell-Rickson, Chief Investment Officer of one of Australia’s largest pension funds, HESTA, issues a call for more women fund managers, saying progress has been too slow. Here are creative ways in which women LPs are stepping up and finding ways to expand the pipeline of women entering the asset management industry. Australia’s new Development Finance Review sets a target that 80 per cent of new development finance investments address gender equality in implementation.

Resilience (GBV, Financial Inclusion, Security). Recent reports on the prevalence of GBVH in the garment and footwear industry should raise alarms as they may indicate that GBVH could be a foreseeable risk in this sector as well. FIFA navigates its gender equality and GBVH pathway in the wake of the recent incident after Spain won the women's World Cup. Policymakers, practitioners and activists working to combat violence against women and girls (VAWG) need to innovate in ways that “stretch beyond the comfort of best practice” UN Women advises in a new brief focused on the VAWG targets set under the SDGs. A rise in youth and people with disabilities successfully accessing municipal loans from a town council in Tanzania, was sparked by a project piloted by the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the International Centre for Local Democracy (ICLD). The newest tool for female farmers in Ethiopia could be a mobile phone as a project aims to leverage interactive voice response technology to provide agricultural extension advisory services, building on a study conducted by 60 Decibels.

Data and Tools. Impact investing has stayed steady even as PE fundraising slows. One of the factors behind this? LPs pushing for GPs to connect their fund fees to impact metrics. The Gender ROI practitioners manual, a diagnostic assessment tool for identifying inequalities and opportunities to improve and monitor outcomes for women and girls developed by Sweef Capital, is now available in Spanish, Vietnamese and Portuguese, ALIVE Ventures and Value for Women have collaborated on these first of their kind studies which explore gender dynamics in EdTech and HRTech value chains in Latin America and provide practical and actionable strategies for companies to improve gender outcomes across their operations. Oxfam has a new gender toolkit out which shows firms how they can increase women leadership in their supply chains. ESG book is partnering with the Sustainable Finance Institute Asia to pilot an initiative on ESG data disclosure in ASEAN markets.

Care Economy. In this op-ed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the authors make the economic and moral case for high quality, universal childcare. A report from CoreWoman and the Canadian government’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), puts a spotlight on how the private sector in Latin America can transform the care economy - through internal policies, value chains and actions in the wider community. Show us your childcare - this is the call from TheSkimm founders and Moms First, in a new campaign urging companies to publicly disclose the childcare benefits they provide.

JEDI, Power, and New Economic Systems. A co-op in Ecuador - the Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito Jardín Azuayo has launched the world’s first diversity and inclusion social bond. Grim news out of the USA, where the conservative activist group behind the Supreme Court’s overturning of affirmative action, has set their sights on a venture capital fund supporting Black women small business owners. In a lawsuit, affirmative action opponent Edward Blum’s American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER), has accused Fearless Fund of unlawful racial discrimination. The suit has been decried by leading voices in the impact investing sector, including our own Suzanne Biegel and Fearless Fund responded to the suit, calling it “an attack to dismantle and address our economic freedom as people of colour.”

Community Calendar

12-14 September, 2023

ANDE Annual Conference hosts this year's event in Accra, Ghana with the theme Accelerating Action: Small Business Solutions and the SDGs. The West Africa Regional Conference is scheduled on the second day of the conference. Register here.

17-24 September, 2023

Climate Week NYC is the largest annual climate event bringing together some 400 events and activities across the City of New York – in person, hybrid and online. Join here.

18-19 September, 2023

UN SDG Summit 2023, New York. At the mid-point implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable development, the summit will follow-up and review the progress made towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more.

3-5 October 2023

PRI in Person 2023 in Tokyo is for PRI signatories and other investment professionals to learn, exchange and collaborate with peers from around the globe. Register here.

4-5 October, 2023

The 2023 Impact Forum by GIIN in Copenhagen is a global impact investment event for impact investing leaders around the globe. Join the event

4, 6 October, 2023

2X Global is convening existing and aspiring gender lens investing practitioners through 2X Global Meetups in Copenhagen and Tokyo. Join these regional events through the links above.

Thank you to our partners and supporters

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Subject: Accelerating action in August, and news from the field