Leadership summit on social enterprise and impact investing in Latin America

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship is partnering with Promotora Social Mexico, a social investor, to host a special one and a half day meeting focusing on investing for a social impact in Latin America. This will be the most comprehensive “private meeting” the Schwab Foundation has so far hosted before a regional World Economic Forum event. It brings together 25 social entrepreneurs from across Latin America and the same number of donors or investors in the sector.

The meeting kicked-off on Sunday, 15 April in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  On 16 April, participants will have the opportunity to see the recipe for the success of Banco Compartamos up and close during a site visit. Afterwards, a lunch panel will explore the subject of  “Building the Impact Investing Space in Latin America” both from the perspective of the social entrepreneur as well as the investor. In the afternoon, social entrepreneurs and investors will have an opportunity to “speed-date” to discuss concrete collaboration opportunities. The learning of the day will then be taken into a joint session with the Forum’s Investor community, comprised of some of the largest private equity, venture capital firms and institutional investors across the world.

While currently hardly a week goes by without an event focused on impact investing somewhere in the world, this particular summit offers a unique chance to bring in the often neglected “fringes” of the nascent sector: the social enterprises that should be the subjects of investment and the large investors, which should be the main actors in the field in the years to come.

Author: Mirjam Schöning, Head and Senior Director, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship