Financing the Transition

Traditional development finance is no longer adequate to meet the scale and complexity of global challenges in the 21st century. With an annual funding gap of $2.5 trillion to deliver the SDGs, new forms of finance are essential to address the devastating effects of climate change, rapidly growing inequality in the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations, among others.

Over the past decade, market-based approaches and impact investing have shown some promise to harness the much needed additional capital required to catalyse positive social and economic change. To date, however, SDI has mostly relied on development finance and philanthropy to support its transnational network of slum dweller federations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. At this stage, it is widely recognised that SDI has the potential to manage revenue-generating enterprises that engage with the impact investing community and move the organization to a more sustainable financing model. In doing so, SDI will assist the impact investing community to make serious commitments to the poorest of the poor — a segment of society generally overlooked by market-based approaches.

The session is organised in collaboration with ABN AMRO and will be hosted by Ellen Sprenger. It includes a simulation, along the lines of ‘Dragon’s Den’, in which slum dwellers and their support professionals will present projects for the consideration of potential investors.

This meeting is by invitation only. Are you interested? Please contact finance@sdinederland.nl