A few weeks back, PCV had its debut on the international stage. With funding from The Rockefeller Foundation, PCV’s InSight team hosted a meeting of about 30 policymakers, advocates, and researchers from ten countries – from USA and Canada to Ghana, India and South Africa, quite a bunch! – to talk about the ways that governments can, and should, encourage investment in under-served markets.
So off to the Rockefeller Foundation conference center in Bellagio, Italy, on Lake Como we went! Executive Director, Beth Sirull, Director of InSigh, Ben Thornley, and InSight Project Manager, Meredith Willa, were front and center at this very exciting exchange.
Upon their return, one of the attendees – Ming Wong, from the Hong Kong Social Enterprise and Development/ Enhancing Self-Reliance through District Partnership Program – wrote a great blog post that I would like to share with you all. Here’s what he had to say about the meeting, posted to his blog on Monday, July 25th:
“The One on Bellagio” by Ming Wong
It has been almost a year since I started documenting my journey into the social investment space. In this relatively short period, I have met many of the pioneers and gurus who have embarked on their respective journeys in this space long before words like social entrepreneurship and impact investing existed. I have been pleasantly surprised by their openness and warmth in welcoming newbies like me into their community. Everyone has been most happy to share his or her knowledge and contacts, unlike most of the people I know from the traditional financial and business world. To paraphrase Dorothy, I have a feeling we’re not on Wall Street any more.
Last week, my journey took me took me to the picture perfect village of Bellagio on the shores of Lake Como in Italy. Bellagio was already a holiday resort from as early as the Roman times and it is easy to understand why. Blessed with wonderful weather all year round, the village sits strategically at the Punto Spartivento, the ‘point which divides the wind’ and is known as ‘the pearl of the lake’.
The purpose of my visit was to participate in a workshop on impact investing and policy, hosted jointly by the Rockefeller Foundation, Insight at Pacific Community Ventures and Initiative for Responsible Investment at Harvard University. Thirty of us gathered for four days to work on “Putting Private Capital to Work for Public Good”, dissecting and examining cases from the United States, United Kingdom, India, South Africa and Brazil. In addition to the presenters from the above countries, our group also included thought leaders from Canada, Australia and Ghana. I was the sole representative from Hong Kong.
For me though, the most valuable part of the Bellagio conference was the opportunity to share my work with a small group of people from different parts of the world, receive feedback and learn from our collective experience. I was thrilled to discover that Canada has also set up its version of UK’s Social Investment Task Force known as the Canadian Task Force on Social Finance. Both websites are treasure troves of information for investors interested in social investing and government officials interested in designing policies to develop the social finance sector. I strongly believe that Hong Kong has a lot to learnfrom the UK and I am now adding Canada to the list as well.
On the last day of the workshop, all the participants were asked to share their thoughts on how the others might be able to help advance the projects they are working on. Some brought up about the importance of metrics as a means to measure the social impact of their work. Others talked about the criticality of achieving scale if the entire sector were to be taken seriously by mainstream finance.
For me though, I had something more fundamental to say:
Hong Kong’s social enterprise sector is dominated by NGOs that are primarily funded by grants. As a result, Hong Kong’s impact investing is practically non-existent. Local charitable foundations are only just becoming aware of impact investing as an alternative to providing grants. The government has also been slow to embrace some of the global best practices in this sector, preferring to allow the private sector to take the lead.
Having said that, Hong Kong remains an important center for social finance and innovation that extends well beyond its 7 million population. As China’s window to the world, Hong Kong often becomes its role model as well because the city enjoys the freedom to experiment on a smaller, more manageable scale before proven ideas are transplanted to the mainland. So if impact investing becomes an established way to put private capital (philanthropic or otherwise) to work for public good in Hong Kong, the ramifications for China, with its billion plus population and myriad of social and environmental issues, would be very positive.
Another recent trend is the increasing number of young entrepreneurs from the US and Europe relocating their operations to Hong Kong because of the city’s talent pool, quality of life, access to capital and proximity to the low cost manufacturing centers across the border. Many of these entrepreneurs are designing products to meet the needs of the Bottom of the Pyramid sector, not only in China but also the rest of the world.
Global institutions, whether private foundations or government-affiliated entities, that are keen to promote the growth of social finance and impact investing in China would do well to invest time in Hong Kong to help the city to develop its social sector ecosystem. By simply making a stop in Hong Kong, whenever their travels take them to Asia, and spreading the word on impact investing, the heads of these institutions would already be doing Hong Kong a great service.
I sincerely hope that my appeal would be remembered and taken seriously by my fellow participants at the workshop. In the meantime, my journey continues although I doubt that it would ever take me to a nicer place than Bellagio, truly a slice of heaven on earth.ps: Many thanks to the lovely folks from the Rock, PCV and IRI for making the workshop such a memorable event. Looking forward to the next one already. Maybe in Hong Kong?
Thanks for coming, Ming – and for letting us re-tell your story!