The third Vatican impact investing conference will convene in Rome next month. It seeks to mobilize capital to address pressing, interconnected, global problems: migrants and refugees, climate change, youth underemployment, and health. In his encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis notes the “tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation” (25) and notes “interdependence obliges us to think of one world with a common plan.” (164). I am honored to be the invited moderator of a panel on Migrants, Refugees, and SMEs.
In January, when Miller Center decided to launch the SEM accelerator program for social enterprises serving or led by refugees, migrants, or human trafficking survivors, we wondered how many and what kinds of these ventures existed.
We were surprised when many of the over 100 applicants told us the SEM cohort is the first they’d encountered focused on helping them scale their impact, as Program Manager Marie Haller notes. Their business models include impact sourcing, entrepreneurial support, and skills training. Technologies including blockchain and AI are part of the solutions they offer to refugees and modern-day slaves.
We had hoped that launching the SEM program might reveal entrepreneurial solutions to serve the most marginalized among our common human family. The quality and quantity of applicant social enterprises and their profound passion in our pioneering program amazed and heartened us. Convening this group of social entrepreneurs has built momentum among a variety of stakeholders interested in finding new solutions for these global crises.
Vodafone Americas Foundation, The Chao Foundation/Transparent Fish Fund, and Skoll Foundation have stepped forward to provide Miller Center financial support as we accompany the SEM social enterprises; we are grateful.
ImpactAlpha recently ran a story entitled Entrepreneurs and investors mobilize to tackle challenges of refugees, migrants, and modern day slaves, identifying a growing “market” of the forcibly displaced and enslaved and consequent growing pools of capital. We are thrilled that this story names four of the twenty-one social enterprises in our Social Entrepreneurship at the Margins (SEM)cohort and humbled by the Reuters headline, California executives mentor businesses helping migrants and slaves.
When journalists and foundations use phrases like “stock the pipeline” of investment-ready social enterprises, and “an emerging ecosystem”, it suggests a bigger movement is afoot to define an impact sector focused on the needs of the displaced and enslaved.
We need it now more than ever. Tomorrow, June 20, is World Refugee Day. We hope you’ll join us on this journey to discern a common plan that affords refugees dignified livelihoods and eradicates modern-day slavery.
Photo credits: banner image by geralt on Pixabay.com; screenshot of Pope Francis from laudatosi.com; UNHCR, image from UN Refugee Agency post embedded from Facebook by Markel Redondo)
