Impact Investment Exchange Asia (IIX) has announced its Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action on Women's Impact Bond (WIB) to help organisations concerned scale their clean-cook stove businesses, benefiting people including women from harmful air pollution.
The IIX, a leader in social sector development through impact investing, announced the WIB at the 2014 CGI annual meeting recently, said a press release.
The WIB will pool US$10 million into an investment vehicle that will support social enterprises and microfinance institutions working towards clean cook-stove initiatives. The WIB will be a publicly-listed bond product on the Impact Exchange, the world's first social stock exchange, allowing retail investors to participate in addition to traditional impact investors.
Over 12 months, the IIX will develop a pipeline of potential WIB borrowers: revenue-generating organisations with proven impact to women's lives, clear intention to scale, and capital requirements, accompanied by viable bond-repayment streams.
The IIX will then support the borrowers by structuring the WIB according to their capital needs and sources of repayment, defining a risk layering strategy, and developing a comprehensive impact measurement framework, the release also said.
Through deployment of the funds raised, the WIB will help the organisations scale their clean-cook stove businesses, so that they can protect an additional 2.63 million people from harmful air pollution, benefit the lives of over 525,000 women, and in turn empower them through providing employment opportunities, increasing their social capital and facilitating their role as environmental stewards.
In addition, the WIB aims to deliver environmental impact by avoiding emission of 315,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and saving 456,000 tonnes of wood, the press release added.
The IIX will be collaborating with supporting partners in the development of the WIB. One such partner is Shearman & Sterling, a leading international law firm, which will be working on the legal aspect of the bond issuance.
The IIX was approached by the CGI in February 2014 to join its diverse community of leaders, including CEOs of the world's largest companies, leading NGOs and foundations, government representatives, and prominent philanthropists.
It is a Singapore-based organisation with a mission to provide the social enterprises (SEs) in Asia greater access to investment capital, allowing them to expand the impact of their activities more rapidly.
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) - an initiative of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation - convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world's most pressing challenges.
The CGI annual meetings have brought together more than 180 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media.
To date, members of the CGI community have made more than 2,800 commitments, which are already improving the lives of more than 430 million people in over 180 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued at $103 billion.
smunima@yahoo.com