Living Up To Our Mission: Our 2020 Annual Report
Living Up To Our Mission: Our 2020 Annual Report
The extent of the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is, frankly, bewildering. For us at Yunus Social Business, both as individuals and as an organisation, 2020 was a year that posed huge challenges.
In the midst of these setbacks, one thing has brought us particular encouragement: through our partnerships with our funders, through our collaboration with our portfolio social businesses and through teamwork with our remarkable colleagues and team members, we have been able to carry out work which has shown us that we are an organisation that lives up to its mission and remains true to its purpose.
Discover more in our 2020 Annual Report.
LESSONS FROM COVID-19
For us, COVID-19 has made clearer than ever the importance of social businesses within our societies and economies throughout the world. How many times have we heard about “building back better” or increased focus on “stakeholder capitalism”? Social businesses represent the better, more inclusive capitalism that we all want to see, and businesses great and small throughout the world have a huge amount to learn from them.
Going forward, we at Yunus Social Business will continue to do everything in our power to finance and support these game-changing social businesses and bring more attention to them, as they deserve. At the same time, we will continue to work with corporations and support them in learning best practices from the fantastic social-business entrepreneurs in our portfolio and beyond.
Indian Social Business, Waste Ventures, Support Their Waste Pickers Through The Crisis
These have been difficult times for our portfolio companies. They are working hard to protect those they employ and serve. In India, Waste Ventures recycle plastic and improve the lives of waste pickers. As they are dependent on revenues from previous months to meet their expenses, the abrupt pause to their activities has made their ability to pay their workforce much more difficult.
We have launched an innovative new financing solution: The Social Success Note!
Today, the world’s first Social Success Note or "SSN" is launched at the Skoll World Forum by Yunus Social Business, The Rockefeller Foundation, UBS Optimus Foundation and Impact Water.
We've been featured in the Hauck & Aufhäuser Magazine (German)
Our Chief Investment Officer, Karen Hitschke, spoke to Gerd Hübner for Hauck & Aufhäuser Magazine about the investments we make with our philanthropic venture funds. Read the article in German below.
