UNDP is on a journey to connect development assistance with impact investment. Impact investing is an investment that aims to generate specific benefits of social or environmental effects along with financial gains. Impact investing includes venture capital, private equity, debt and range of philanthropic investment tools. UNDP has agreed with the Office of the Prime Minister of Armenia to create a national SDGs Innovation Lab and the work is going on towards achieving SDG’s through impact investment which involves promotion of new financial mechanisms as a vehicle of change for the public sector.

INSEAD Business School is committed to “business as a force for good”, the issue of leveraging impact investment for development is particularly relevant for INSEAD and hence their partnership with Armenia and UNDP to bring about innovations in SDG’s. The panel altogether believed in three things – collaborate, understand and implement. Stanford Change Lab believes that, SDGs do not exist in isolation and cannot be solved in isolation. So the problems that haven’t been solved in the past, past solutions cannot be used. Therefore, creating new solutions become a design task. And that is exactly what Stanford Change Lab is providing platform for. Mr. Jones believes that, the SDG’s make sense to investors and they make sense to development, so it is all inter-connected. Therefore, innovation in SDG’s are important and should be looked at from the eye of impact investment which gives opportunities for many new business models and growth for upcoming entrepreneurs. Armenia believes in facilitating an enabling environment for letting innovation come through and ultimately achieving SDG’s through impact investment mechanism, which would also boost the economy of their country.

Meeting: High Level Political Forum 2017: Impact Investment and Innovation for SDGs

Date/Time/Location: July 13, 2017, 10:00 AM – 01:00 PM; Conference Room 11, United Nations Headquarters, New York, NY

Speakers: HE Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, Permanent Representatives of Armenia to the UN; Ms. Cihan Sultanoglu, Assistant Secretary General and Director, UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS; Mr. Bradley Busetto, UN Resident      Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Armenia; Mr. Hans Wahl, Director of Social Entrepreneurship Programme at INSEAD; Alex Khachatryan, Director, Center for Strategic Initiatives of the Govt. of Armenia; Mr. Garo Armen, Founder and Chairman of Children of Armenia Fund; Mr. Souren Aloyan, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Dasaran Educational Program; Ms. Marie Lou Papazian, MD, Tumo Center for Creative Technologies; Mr. Banny Banerjee, Director, Stanford ChangeLabs; Mr. Kevin Jones, Co-founder and Convenor, Social Capital Markets, SOCAP; Mr. Mika Pyykko, Project Director, Impact Investing, Sitra

Written by: WIT Representative Harsh Agarwal