Notícias

The Annual Dinner for SITAWI Supporters took place in Rio de Janeiro on May 20. The event had the participation of Arminio Fraga, special guest and supporter since 2011, and Leonardo Letelier, SITAWI CEO, and the conversations there included the themes of economic challenges of the country and the role of social finance. Guests had the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the organization’s work in a speech from Leonardo, the organization’s main supporters and a representative from Insolar, one of the projects that SITAWI supports.

To attract responsible investors, companies must learn to communicate their financial results integrated to their environmental and social performance. Last month, SITAWI trained more than 15 Brazilian companies on how to build concise presentations for institutional investors. Download the presentation here. (portuguese only)

On June 7, SITAWI presented its expertise on the growing market for green bonds to an audience in Brasilia made up of environmental specialists and Bank professionals. Companies and financial institutions can use these bonds to finance green assets and assets that benefit the climate. Check out our presentation: Green Bonds – a new instrument to promote green investments. (portuguese only)

Brazilian companies have many environmental investments to make, while investors are eager to purchase so-called green bonds. SITAWI has been working to foster this market in Brazil since 2014 through events and advocacy. We would like to congratulate BRF, the first Brazilian company to issue a green bond: €500 million! Find out more about green bond opportunities and check our presentation here.

This is the amount held in listed equities by Brazilian pension funds that incorporate environmental and social issues to an intermediate or advanced level. The data was presented by SITAWI at the ESG Alpha Event, last May. Globally, responsible investments now account for $21 trillion across all asset classes. Check this and more interesting insights in the Event’s presentations. (portuguese only)

Around 10.5 million Brazilians live in conditions of extreme poverty. These citizens are denied many of their rights and often survive through assistance from those touched by their precarious living conditions. The problem is that these donations tend to be sporadic, which explains Brazil being in the 90th position in the World Giving Index, behind much poorer countries like Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

In Brazil 24% of companies close after two years of operations (according to Sebrae’s 2013 census of entrepreneurship) and in the US, half do not last more than four years (based on the average of a number of studies). So why then do we insist on saying that nonprofits are not sustainable, despite the fact that some are more than a century old?

To waste one good crisis is sad. To waste two is unconscionable. But will investors in Brazil make good use of the apparently separate crises over water and corruption?São Paulo, a city where drinking water was, until recently, used to flush toilets, wash cars and clean pavements, has faced its worst drought for 84 years. The knock-on effects – hydro-electricity shortages, for example – could be dire. Why should Brazil, which produces 12% of the world’s fresh water, be so short of this critical resource in its most economically important city?São Paulo’s water utility, Sabesp, was asleep at the wheel, but, as with other preventable surprises, a lack of warning wasn’t the core problem. It was rather denial about plausible worst-case scenarios, and the undervaluing of prevention and resilience. As highlighted by Brazil’s most respected climatologists, “If deforestation in the Amazon continues, São Paulo will probably dry up – if we don’t act now, we’re lost”.
On corruption, Brazil has a strong legal framework and is seen as an emerging market role model. But it was ranked 69th out of 175 countries in the 2014 Corruption Perceptions index. As with sustainability, there is a big gap between ‘walk’ and ‘talk’.

SITAWI Finance for Good has partnered with the European collective YOPO to create the “FEM-Innovation Social Fund: Women for ICT with Social Impact” to support the startup of a new kind of accelerator, the international Gendered Innovation Accelerator (GIA) in Brazil, one that will sustain and invest in the redefinition of Information and Communication Technology by supporting innovation with a gender lens. It is not just about correcting the gender imbalance among software coders, but to contribute to the constitution of a new mentality and, therefore, new opportunities in the ICT area. The Fund aims to raise R$ 1.5 million to support startups that will focus on redefining technology and communications from a woman’s perspective.

The CIES Project was developed to take specialized, humanized and high-technology preventive medical care to communities in need using advanced mobiles medical centers. It is a non-profit organization that focuses on serving low-income people – the population most deprived of access to quality medical care.

The NGO Centro de Assistência Social Nossa Senhora da Piedade (Caspiedade) is involved in at-risk community development in São Paulo, serving close to 1500 families with vocational training, food banks, and social services.

The Instituto para o Desenvolvimento do Investimento Social (IDIS) offers consulting and capacity building services related to impact investing to companies, institutes, foundations, families, and individuals. IDIS´ mission is to systematize different models of social intervention that contribute to reducing social inequalities in the country. In its 10 years of operating history, IDIS has supported 109 clients in the structuring of private social investments, trained 8,000 professionals, and created 18 impact investing organizations that currently managed 500MM Reais in social investments.

Founded in 1992, Davida´s mission is to protect the legal rights of prostitutes. In 2005 Davida launched Daspu, a social clothing brand, in an effort to make the organization more sustainable.

Solidarium is a social business based in Curitiba with a mission to “build a genuine Brazil, rich in diversity, not inequality” using a network of clients, ambassadors, artisans, cooperatives, artists and shops.

Imembuí Microfinanças provides credit to small entrepreneurs in Santa Maria (Rio Grande do Sul) who are generally excluded from access to credit from traditional financial institutions. In 2011, the organization had a year-end positive balance of R$70k after reporting a loss in 2010. It was able to obtain a subsidized line of credit from the Banco de Desenvolvimento do Rio Grande do Sul to open a new line of microcredit, but demand continued to exceed supply.

Feira Preta´s mission is to promote the social and cultural development of the black community in Brazil by promoting entrepreneurship and supporting artists and micro entrepreneurs.

Banco Palmas is a community bank that offers microcredit and capacity building to entrepreneurs, and helps build partnerships and supply chains for its clients. The bank is part of the Instituto Palmas that is an OSCIP created for the dwellers of Conjunto Palmeira (Fortaleza, CE).

Pipa Social is an NGO that created a talent bank of artists, artisans, and fashion designers that live in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to help them access new markets.

Mobile Metrix is a NGO that was founded in 2010 with the objective of collecting data on the bottom of the pyramid. The organization aims to collect data on ‘invisible’ community members that are not accounted for in traditional research, and remain forgotten in the sectors of employment, education, and heath.

For a long time, the model for socially-aware executives was: “First I’ll earn some money, and then I’ll think about how to help other people”. The current generation doesn’t want to wait any longer. You can see this in the growth in management courses for the social sector with the ever-younger students. According to the Brazilian Geographical and Statistical Institute (IBGE), the Third Sector already employs 1.8 million people in Brazil and this growing trend should continue for the next ten years.

For Marcos Vaz, head of sustainability at Natura, also part of ISE, connecting companies with wider society is the way to get solid and long-term results. “We believe in the importance of mobilizing civil society to create an atmosphere for sustainable entrepreneurship. It is key to develop a model that achieves economic growth, social development and a sensible use of natural resources,” he told us.

Clearly, there is something wrong with this conversation: people introduce themselves by who they are (Maria Clara, for example); not by who they “are not” (Marcelo, in the previous example). The same thing happens for companies: Vale is a mining corporation and not a non-bank. If that is the case, then, why do we think it normal to talk about “non-profit organizations” rather than “organizations with social impact” or, simply, “social organizations”?

In the past five years, peer-to-peer fundraising (or social fundraising, fundraising for events or between friends) has more than doubled the amount raised online—and is close to reaching a billion US dollars.