AVPN Global Conference 2023 brought together leaders from Asia and beyond, to collectively envision an impact future that is inclusive, equitable and sustainable. Importantly, this convening was an opportunity to build the trust between social investors, philanthropists and community impact leaders that will be the essential ingredients for Asia’s success.

Through three days, delegates had the opportunity to explore key issues that impact the region and develop collaborative partnerships that lead to action.

Conference report

Global challenges, Asian Solutions

Andrew Milner, Alliance magazine

Transformational collaboration, Asian leadership, empowered communities, urgent action: AVPN CEO Naina Batra offered these four rallying cries in her opening remarks of this year’s conference in Kuala Lumpur. These themes or some combination were to echo and re-echo across the 103 sessions that made up the conference, supported and hosted by Malaysian foundation, Yayasan Hasanah, whose own forum, Fostering Justice-Based Philanthropy, ran in tandem with the AVPN event. Read more…

Interview

Ajay Piramal, Piramal Group and Piramal Foundation

Ajay Piramal

One of the keynote speakers at this year’s AVPN Conference was Ajay Piramal, Chairman of the Piramal Group and the Piramal Foundation. Is he wearing two hats, a corporate one and a philanthropic one? Not really. He explains to Andrew Milner that what he attempts to do through his businesses is not fundamentally different from what he does through his philanthropy – and how, in his view, a spiritual element underlies them both. Read more…

Poll Winners

Annmarie McQueen, Alliance magazine

‘The onus is on us’

Last month, AVPN hosted their 2023 Global Conference in the bustling city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in partnership with Yayasan Hasanah. Alliance polled our audience to find out which session they’d most like to read about. ‘Building Inclusive Futures: Integrating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Grant Making and Programs’ was the first place poll winner. Read more…

‘We’re here to serve, we’re not here to demand’

Best practices to build strong funder-grantee relationships’ was the second place poll winner. Another packed room for this session, with a strong panel profiling an equal split of speakers on both the funder and grantee side. Moderated by Shonali Banerjee from the Centre of Strategic Philanthropy, panelists included Sumitra Visvanathan from Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO), Emilita Monville-Oro from the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), and Reshma Anand from the Ford Foundation. Read more… 

Session replay

Building Climate-Smart Health Systems

Climate change has a direct impact on public health. Environmental degradation and climate change increase the incidence of infectious diseases and heat-related illness while threatening food supplies and increasing the intensity and frequency of natural disasters. These consequences are disproportionately borne by the marginalised and vulnerable, exacerbating health inequities. Health systems play a critical role in building sustainable economies, especially in terms of last mile delivery to remote communities and supply planning. At the same time, the operations of health systems carry environmental consequences.

Reflections from delegates

The makings of effective philanthropy

Keya Madhvani Singh, India Climate Collaborative

One day, not that long ago, a few of us from the India Climate Collaborative sat on a low couch in our office tossing ideas back and forth as we tried to answer a challenging question: what are the ingredients that make a good philanthropist?  It was a question that was echoed at the annual Asian Venture Philanthropy Forum conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Read more…

3 takeaways for deeper impact

Joe Wheeler, University of Oregon and Impact First

Last October, my academic advisor nonchalantly told me that the University of Oregon had some funding to send me to a philanthropy conference in Kuala Lumpur and asked if I wanted to go; I did not have to think long before replying with an enthusiastic “yes”. Being relatively new to the PhD world (in my first year of study), opportunities like these do not feel normal – and I hope I never lose sight of how magical it is to fly across the world to meet thousands of likeminded people. Read more…

Impact vs Return: The balancing act

Sai Kit Ng, Director, Artem Ventures

One of the key observations I gathered from the AVPN Conference is an overwhelming recognition for impact investors to start looking at balancing impact outcomes and financial returns, given the rise of the importance of sustainability of businesses/projects that investors are backing.  This provides me with the optimism that conventional capital would find a way to balance its financial returns objectives with impact outcomes.  Read more…

Views from an impact-first satellite operator

Christian Patouraux, Kacific Broadband Satellites Ltd

Pacific Islands has often been marginalised in global affairs due to a number of factors – their remoteness, small populations, and lack of economic resources to name a few. In recent years, however, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of the Pacific with its strategic location, vulnerability to climate change, and its rich cultural heritage. Read more…

An incredibly humble and honest panel on leadership

Renata Zanetti, Philanthropy Australia

Day two of AVPN and the Hasanah Forum presented a panel titled People & Leadership: Nurturing Courageous Leaders. Facilitated by Louise Pulford from the Social Innovation Exchange, the incredible leaders in the panel presented some reflections and insights for philanthropists across Asia with many lessons applicable globally (disclaimer: noting that this reflection will never do justice to the face-to-face presentation). Read more…

Janine Teo, Solve Education!

What does trust-based philanthropy and unrestricted funding mean for social impact organisations

I was on a panel at AVPN’s Global Conference last week in Kuala Lumpur together with Dee Bourbon from Chervon Group, Antara Lahiri from Micron Technology, Aimy Lee from Penang Science Cluster, moderated by Moutushi Sengupta from AVPN. Among other takeaways from one of the most engaging panels that I’ve been in, is the realisation that both Aimy and I did not fully understand what “unrestricted funding” meant. So I had a few ah-ha moments. Read more…

How to stay inspired when working on complex systematic problems

The energy at the AVPN annual conference in Kuala Lumpur is infectious and full of hope.Which is odd because we are all working in the social impact space. And this means that we face adversity and the ugly side of our society daily. Read more…

The spirit of collaborative philanthropy at AVPN

The hall was filled with excitement as we watched Naina open the 2023 AVPN conference. The underlying theme this year, from my perspective, is collaboration.As the old saying goes: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.It is in this spirit that AVPN’s first-ever pooled fund was born. Read more…

News from the conference

Asian Youth Wellbeing Fund announced by AVPN

The $3 million fund announced at the AVPN Global Conference 2023 is the first philanthropic pooled fund that focuses on youth mental wellbeing across Southeast Asia and South Asia, with AVPN being supported by Yayasan Hasanah, the foundation of Khazanah Nasional and the Malaysian government’s sovereign wealth fund to catalyse private sector support towards this important cause in Malaysia. Read more…

AVPN Constellations Awards laureates 2023

The 2023 iteration of AVPN’s Constellations Awards focuses on collaborations that advance gender equality in Asia. With huge gaps still existing within the sector, strong, deliberate, and proactive collaborative action is required in order to unlock capital to create a more equitable world for women and girls in Asia. Read more…

Eight Asia gender equality fund recipients announced

On 20 June 2023, AVPN announced the selection of eight non-profit organisations (NPOs) across South Asia, South East Asia, and North East Asia, to receive funding as part of the highly-anticipated Asia Gender Equality Fund, marking AVPN’s commitment to fostering trust-based philanthropy in Asia. Read more…