"Diversity gives you resilience. Monoculture and the current way of farming is not the only way"

What is healthy soil and how can you help nurture it? What is the true definition of regenerative agriculture? And is it possible to grow different fruits from the same tree?!

Take a walk around the incredibly biodiverse farm of Sheila Darmos, farmer and agri-food social entrepreneur. The farm acts as an experimental and showcase hub for regenerative practices in Greece, attracting people from across Europe looking to become leaders in the transition to sustainable and regenerative agriculture. In our discussion with Sheila, we covered topics such as:

- How to build out a resilient alternative to monoculture in farming at a local and national level

- The myriad benefits of an inclusive, holistic approach to pest control, through embracing diversity in farming

- How to transition from monoculture to organic farming, and further transitioning to regenerative agriculture and agroforestry

- How to build countrywide adaptability and resilience into farming communities

- The ingredients of a healthy soil and how to nurture it

- The commercial power of working diversely with nature; uncovering hidden forests; food recipes, swimming with frogs and more!

"It is intrinsically part of human beings to steward the ecosystems that are essentially nurturing them"

Regenerative Farming Greece

The Southern Lights

Bioregional Weaving Lab Laconia (Lo)

European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA)

Cob.gr

Liveloula

Dr Christine Jones

Elaine Ingham

Reinventing Organisations by Frederic Laloux

Theory U and other books by Otto Scharmer

The Four Agreements

Fava recipe...

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"Globally, just 1-2% of financial assets are managed by women or people of colour"

In a climate in which the business value of DEI is increasingly undermined, this wide-ranging discussion with Bonnie Chiu, MD of The Social Investment Consultancy, sets the record straight on how the inclusivity debate should be re-connected to innovation and finding the best talent, how she is helping to shape the new SDG Standards assurance framework for private equity funds to combat SDG washing, and:

- The power of grandparents

- How to support social enterprises and funds to better understand and scale their impact

- How to tackle the shocking stat that only 1-2% of financial assets globally are managed by people of colour and/or women

- How it feels to experience DEI discrimination

- How to use your individual lived experience to catalyse systems change

- How to unlock the commercial value in NGOs and Charities to help them transition into self sustaining social enterprises to thrive and scale their impact

- Why mindsets are the key to success within founding teams

- The beauty of London life, tips for parents with young children, inspiring books and podcasts, and more!

"It doesn't matter if you have the best business idea or business plan. It comes down to mindset of people"

The Social Investment Consultancy

Social Value International SDG Impact Standards Assurance latest

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Lensational

The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Poetry Unbound Podcast

Expats (Amazon prime)

Investing for Purpose

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"On our current path, there will be more plastics in our oceans than fish by 2050"

Lefteris comes from generations of fishermen, though by his own admission he is not a natural... However, when out on fishing boats as part of a Greek fishing school run by his start up during the financial crisis, he witnessed a fisherman hauling plastic out of the sea along with their catch - and simply throwing the bottles, cans, plastic bags, old nets and even fridges back into the ocean. That's when the idea came to him: What if someone could harness the power of fishing fleets to haul out plastics from the ocean and offer them an additional revenue stream by bringing it in bulk back to shore for recycling and reuse?

This is the incredible story of how, starting with one fisherman (his father), he and Enaleia have scaled into an operation of over 6500 vessels covering most of the mediterranean coast enabling over 1.5m tons of plastics to be recycled, including:

- How to use the tipping point theory to mobilise communities into action (including using charm and tradecraft to persuade the household decision makers!)

- Evolving social enterprise models to deliver systems change to prevent plastics entering the ocean in the first place

- How Enaleia turn over 57% of the plastics retrieved into commercial products including furniture, kayaks, clothing and trainers

- How to build a circular economy network combining the raw power of fishing communities with cutting edge blockchain to verify end-to-end traceability

- Details on the CO2 efficiencies of melting down recycled plastics to create new products vs virgin plastic processing

- How Enaleia's circularity operations in Egypt include repurposing plastics at scale into urban products including street paving

- The future potential of plastic credits

- The power of simplicity, the value of being authentic, how to gain people's trust - and so much more..!

"Clean-ups are great but we are just treating the symptom of the problem. There are 1000 rivers in the world responsible for 80% of plastics pollution in our oceans"

#Circularity #MarinePlastics #Tippingpoints #SystemsChange

Lefteris portrait picture credit + Enaleia article from The Washington Post

Enaleia

Ethereum Foundation

Ashoka

EcoAlf

Gravity Wave

Skyplast

Antipollution

Eldia

Polyeco

Creta Recycling

Investing for Purpose

Ellen Macarthur Foundation

UN SDGS

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“Why are we measuring Impact? To make sure we are maximising impact”

Across the impact investment industry there is an ongoing evolution of impact measurement. But how often do you hear details of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that impact funds are actually using and the reasons that they were chosen? In this impact masterclass, Lara Viada of Creas, Spain’s pioneering impact investment intermediary, now in the process of raising a third fund of €70m, reveals all, including:

- The magic ingredients impact investors are looking for in founder teams

- Detailed IMM framework and KPI examples across elderly care, nutrition and education

- How the European Investment Fund (EiF) has been instrumental in scaling the impact investment sector

- The advantages of impact fund sector/vertical specialisation and why Creas transitioned to 'Empowering people, Caring for People and Regenerating the Economy'

- Using Theory of Change to identify actionable impact KPIs that inform strategic decision making

- How Creas use the EiF impact carry model to tie in the impact performance of their funds with 100% of their potential carried interest to safeguard and maximise their impact

- How funds can stand out to entrepreneurs in an increasingly competitive impact fund marketplace

- Novel approaches to getting into the impact finance sector, book recommendations, inspiration from India and more!

“If the social impact multiple of the fund is below 60%, then we don’t get any carried interest”

Creas - Impact Fund

Creas 2024 Impact Report (EN)

Creas investees discussed:

Qida

ZenEducate

Smileat

The European Investment Fund (EIF)

EIF and Creas Impacto II Fund

A day in the life of Abed Salama, by Nathan Thrall

Investing for Purpose

Impact Europe

Social Value International

Impact Frontiers

Global Impact Investing Network

SDG Goals

#ImpactInvesting #ImpactKPIs #Marketbuilding

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“Within the next decade the financial system has to make some progressive moves to protect our way of life, because if we don’t, the economy as we’ve known it for the last 150 years is going to break.”

With the meaning and value of Diversity Equity and Inclusion increasingly undermined, Beth Knight, Head of Social Sustainability at Lloyds Banking Group, shares her lived experience of the necessary and tangible gains made from engaging with underserved stakeholder groups across the globe, in her refreshingly personal, frank and illuminating style, including:

- Career lessons through a social/environmental lens spanning Accenture, E&Y, NGOs to co-ordinating Amazon’s global humanitarian response to the Ukraine War

- The meaning of sustainability and the joy of training cohorts as a fellow of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership

- How to successfully host a room of indigenous leaders representing 80% of the worlds biodiversity and 30 financiers possessing transformative power but limited attention spans

- Unpacking the complexities of the critical junctions where equity meets environmental impact

- A cheat code for being a successful CSO

- Why family owned businesses and funds tend to embody exemplary legacy thinking

- The role of finance to enable sustainable livelihoods and the impact of insurance

- How to stay well in a time of upheaval (Spoiler alert: Includes outdoor walking meetings and picking up the phone) and more!….

“The social aspects of sustainability have been mobilised around poverty to a certain extent, but where where equity meets environmental impact is critical”

Links

Lloyds Banking Group

Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)

Task force for Socially Related Financial Disclosures

Shining Hope for Community

The Centre for Synchronous Leadership

Mindful Exclusion Report

E&Y Four Futures

E&Y CSR in financial services

Accenture Development Partnerships

Peter Pan - JM Barrie

Tickling Sharks - John Elkington

Green Swans - John Elkington

Tony Juniper & King Charles: Climate Change Ladybird Book

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“I would like to invite impact investors to look at the region as an opportunity for revival”

After 20 years of leading effective capacity building across social enterprises in the MENA regional through venture philanthropy, Alfanar are now launching the first regional impact investment fund for the Arab world, aimed for investing in scalable enterprises matching purpose with profit. Richard Mullane caught up with Alfanar Country Director for Lebanon Maya Rahal at the Impact Europe Bilbao conference to find out how Alfanar have managed to support so many brilliant start-ups, delivering critical social and environmental solutions, often under extreme circumstances, including:

- Stories from flourishing regional Social enterprises across edtech, circular fashion and culture

- What it takes to stay working towards positive solutions in zones devastated by conflict

- How Alfanar select enterprises and help them transform from being reliant on philanthropy to being self-sustaining

- Lessons learned from 20 years on the ground for other global venture philanthropists

- How Maya made the journey from being a journalist and communications expert to an Impact leader

- Why the relationships between funds and enterprises can be like a marriage, the social ingredients that make Lebanon such a special place to live, tips for staying grounded and healthy - and more!

“It’s rare for you to be in a job when you can actually see the results in people’s faces”

Alfanar Venture Philanthropy

Alfanar: Tabshoura: Digitising education across Lebanon and the region

Alfanar: Fabricaid - Socially and environmentally conscious value chain for the apparel industry: optimizing the collection, sorting, up-cycling, and resale of secondhand clothesd

Alfanar: Inaash - dedicated to improving the lives of women in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon, while preserving the embroidery culture and tradition

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

The Lighthouse Podcast

BerrytechBeat Podcast

“If you are born every day with one seed in your hand, then you have to plant it”

#venturephilanthropy #socialenterprise #menaimpactfund

Investing for Purpose

Social Value International

Impact Europe

Impact Frontiers

Global Impact Investing Network

SDG Goals

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"The cost of inaction will be substantially larger than the cost of action"

The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review has become one of the most influential reports on climate change ever produced since its release by Her Majesty’s Treasury of the UK Government in October 2006. Dimitri Zenghelis, senior economist for the review, worked under Gordon Brown as Head of Economic Forecasting in HM Treasury and has since held multiple roles, fellowships and academic posts including Senior Visiting Fellow at the LSE's The Grantham Institute and Senior Advisor to the Bennett Institute (University of Cambridge). He advises governments, banks, financial institutions, NGOs, and other international organisations on sustainability, climate change, innovation, economic modelling and clean urbanisation. Get comfortable for a macro-economic and financial markets double espresso covering topics including:

- Shenanigans that went on at the heart of government between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown

- The impact of the Stern Review’s focus on an economic case for climate action on the acceleration of the transition

- Optimising your investment strategy across the transition

- Who is Wan Gang? And why did he have a greater influence on the development of electric vehicles than Elon Musk.

- The reinforcing feedback between reduction in cost of technologies and favourable politics

- The difference between conditional and complacent optimism, the future of aviation, the joy of reading children's books - and a great deal more!

#cleantech #sustainabletransition #macroeconomics #innovation #cleanurbanisation

"It's about forward looking strategy, not backwards looking disclosures"

Links

The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review

The Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge

Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment

Independent Economics

Investing for Purpose

Social Value International

Impact Frontiers

Global Impact Investing Network

SDG Goals

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