Commonwealth discusses potential future collaboration with social investors

Over 50 social investors have met with senior representatives from the Commonwealth Secretariat at the organisation’s headquarters in London.

The meeting – attended by Jean Oelwang, the Chief Executive of Virgin Unite, and Chris West, Director of the Shell Foundation – was an opportunity for the Secretariat to gain more of an understanding in areas of interest for social investors.

“The Commonwealth Secretariat can learn from the experience of social investors and their initiatives in how to create an enabling environment for social and environmental innovation,” said Alejandro Litovsky a Director at Volans, which acts as a part think-tank, part consultancy and part broker.

The discussion – which took place on 16 June – came off the back of the recent Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers Meeting, held in Barbados. The theme for this meeting was ‘Gender Issues in Economic Crisis, Recovery and Beyond: Women as Agents of Transformation’.

This Ministerial meeting was mentioned by Assistant Secretary-General Stephen Cutts during his opening remarks at the social investor meeting.

He then touched on some specific ideas in this area which have been proposed within the Secretariat. One such suggestion is for the Secretariat to bring together major corporations, investors, philanthropists and aid agencies to consider how their resources can have the greatest development impact.

The meeting also launched the special issue of Alliance Magazine (http://www.alliancemagazine.org/), the principal publication for philanthropists and impact investors worldwide.