W2: Kick-Off: Why Are We Here
🛎 Weekly Summary
I hope you are ready to dive in and swim together this week. On Wednesday, we'll have our first community call. Please ensure these are on your calendar for every Wednesday.
This week, when we gather together, we'll spend some time getting to know each other. And we will also be exploring the questions of why we are here in this program and what is our definition of impact investing.
This week, we all meet for the first time, and that is exciting. Our journey commences. I hope you've prepared and packed. We've had almost all of you join our platforms, and if you haven't yet, please join the WhatsApp group and check out the playbook resources.
Do you have any questions? Drop us a line.
Please take a chance to review the study materials on Week 1 and now in Week 2. We have now included some previouis recordings there. We'll always make some past recordings available so you can listen in on your own time.
We’re now going to get into the meat of what sustainable finance and impact investing mean. Please check out the Playbook for all the content on the upcoming sessions and sign up on the Calendar.
Finally, be sure to add the Fellowship to your LinkedIn profiles and promote yourselves as Fellows of the Spring 2025 cohort as we continue to make people aware of our work.
Week 2: Why Are We Here
What You Need to Do:
Explore the Playbook and Resources
We will provide you with additional resources throughout the program that we’ll put into the Google Drive and summarize in the Playbook. It would be worth your time to go through these and to see the different folders of the drive.
These resources will be available to you after the program, and we’ll add them as we progress through the different modules and weeks. Some of the content is highly recommended to accompany the content of the sessions, and others are optional if you’d like to learn more. You can find all of them there, arranged following our modules. We’ll add more as we go, so feel free to share any other resources you might have. Be sure to check out Week 1 and Week 2.
Review Upcoming Event List & Program Summary
Lost your overview? We got you covered with this program summary & list of all events (you can of course also find the link in the playbook). We strongly advise you to attend our weekly community call & then see what works best with your schedule & your passion when it comes to all other opportunities (skill sessions, partner events etc.).
You should see more calendar invites to join us for our community calls and upcoming sessions. You can also manually add them to your calendar by subscribing to our calendar and adding your email to the event.
Join Communication Platforms
If you haven’t yet, please make sure to join our WhatsApp group and LinkedIn groups so you can socialize with each other and share resources. There is also a group for our growing LinkedIn community and our Meetup page, which has over 1,000 people.
If you do not join these platforms now, you might miss a crucial part of the program, which is connecting with each other and our broader community.
Community Call
In Week 2, we’re getting to know YOU, the fellows, and aim to give you some context about the goals and purposes of the Fellowship program and what's in store for you. Look forward to connecting together and developing a strong foundation and understanding of impact investing to get the most out of this program.
Join Online Wednesday, Feb 12the - Register Here
Two guests who will join us are our founder, Lubna Maria Elia, and Adwoa Asare, our board member and leader of the Turner MIINT program. Both will join us live to meet you and to share some resources and advice.
SEE BELOW FOR MATERIALS
Skill Sessions
None this week so you have more time to go through the readings.
🧠 Impact Investing Knowledge
Week 2 is also a good time to familiarize yourself with Impact Investing. What started as a method of applying religious principles to how we want to guide the world has grown into a robust industry that works to influence investment decision-making beyond purely financial considerations. The following resources will give you a good foundation for understanding that impact investing is a narrower aspect of sustainable investing and has evolved out of this space as a way to align values with investment decisions.
The definition of impact investing, like sustainable finance, depends on the context and the speaker. So there are many definitions, and grappling with the nuances of what people really mean when they say “sustainable” or “impact” is really important to consider. One definition we use:
Impact investments are investments made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and/or environmental impact alongside a financial return. (Global Impact Investing Network, GIIN)
The key point here is generating social and environmental changes that are positive. The financial consideration is considered alongside the primary or sole consideration. Impact investing is different from traditional investing in this way. In our program, we will go deeper into this difference and see how there are different levels to the impact created, as many investors can be classified as either impact first or profit first. The distinction I fall back on is that impact is real, demonstratable, thoughtful, and sustainable finance may not be concerned with that impact and certainly in a different focus point.
To really define and understand impact investing, the Impact Principles devised 9 operating principles as a framework for investors for the design and implementation of their impact management systems, ensuring that impact considerations are integrated throughout the investment lifecycle. This is a classical view of what constitutes an impact investment and is very commonly accepted, so making yourself familiar is important.
Additionally, we’ll see how different kinds of impact can be created and invested in. There are different frameworks out there to help you understand, measure, quantify, and relate that impact to others. IRIS+ is one such framework that has grown in popularity, and this gives a great overview of what they consider as the 5 dimensions of impact from GIIN.
In the coming weeks, we will go a lot deeper into these topics. We will discuss our own principles of impact, and how we use them to create change in our lives and community. We’ll explore the intricacies of operationalizing different kinds of impact and the process of investing in these. To get there, we need to understand how to manage impact at each stage of the investment process using what has been coined as IMM - Impact Measurement and Management. In addition, we will explore some basic understanding of financial products, investment analysis, and understanding sustainability priorities.
Hope you are ready to dive in.
Week 2 Resources🧰 Additional Learning Resources
📅 Related sessions & offerings
Additional resources will be added following our live sessions.
Wed 12.02 - Community Call - 12noon ET, 6 pm CET - our community calls start this Wednesday and will go every week. Look forward to you joining
NOTE: If you will not join, please respond to the calendar invite.
Tues XX.XX - Skill Session - NAME LINK
Quick Links:
📹 Week 2 Recordings & Resources
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