Elias Tefarikis

#Catalyzing Change | Communities Own the Solution 🙌🏼 Our CEO Larry Reed joined Martín Burt, CEO of Fundación Paraguaya, for a powerful discussion at Catalyzing Change Week!  Their panel, "Eliminating Multidimensional Poverty means allowing communities to own their poverty and activate partners," explored how the Poverty Stoplight empowers communities to take charge of their well-being. Together, they discussed the importance of: ✅ Community Ownership: When communities identify their needs and solutions, interventions become more effective and sustainable. ✅ Data-Driven Action: The Poverty Stoplight provides valuable data that guides targeted interventions and measures progress.  ✅ Collaboration: Partnerships between organizations and companies multiply impact.

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SEEK-ing Knowledge Just Got Easier at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)! 🎓 IDB is leveraging the power of #AI to make their vast digital publications more accessible for their end users. Meet Kyle Strand, Lead Knowledge Management Specialist at IDB. He shares how the team is using SEEK by Paperflite to transform the way their users - students, researchers, and knowledge seekers - navigate their extensive resource hub. By tapping into AI, IDB is making it effortless for everyone to discover the answers they’re looking for, breaking down knowledge barriers and making research more accessible than ever. With SEEK, finding specific information is as easy as asking a question. Users can instantly get summaries, key insights, and clickable citations that lead directly to the source! Watch the video to see it all in action - https://lnkd.in/g2tzba-w Vinoth Kumar Yega Kumarappan Anant Bhat Dinesh Ravindran Shuba Bhaskaran

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Some of the most pressing challenges of today are natural disasters and global supply shortages. In #TheBahamas, small-scale farmers, women and marginalized groups are being impacted by them. What can we do? IDB Lab and Bron Ltd. are working together in CultivateU, a new project that aims to offer #Educational programs to strengthen ecological sustainability, #Climate resilience and economic growth. Learn about the project's goals here: https://lnkd.in/gnCNQZJx WelAndra Francis-Rolle, William Ernest, César Buenadicha, Marcelo Cabrol, Daniela Carrera Marquis, Anton E. Edmunds, Inter-American Development Bank

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TLDR ;) Too Long (but) Definitely Read! I'm so excited to tell you about what we are building now at Fields of View, with support from Indian School of Development Management (ISDM) 's CDSSI Fellowship. Introducing *drum roll* E-QLT! * EQLT is a simulation tool that takes 100+ variables of a household into account, to assign a Social Protection Score to them. Below 300 and the household is vulnerable. So, we can identify the most vulnerable households in our communities, identify how exactly they are vulnerable (to health risks, to climate risks), and do targeted interventions. * We can simulate the effect of schemes and benefits on the Social Protection of a household. So, we can see which households a direct cash transfer, for example, will make more secure, and which households it will make more vulnerable. We can identify the exact basket of schemes and benefits tailored to the need of every household to lift them out of vulnerability. But that's not even the most exciting part! For the first time we are building EQLT as an open public data platform, that any CSO can use to do targeted interventions in their communities. If you are interested in using EQLT or knowing more, write to us on [email protected] #socialprotection #poverty #simulator #vulnerable #marginalised #schemes #benefits #data #opendata #platform #sumulation #tool #digitaltool

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"Rural places must build internally on the assets and comparative advantages—natural beauty, strong social capital, and quality of life—they already have." This Stanford Social Innovation Review article by Jerry Neal Kenney, Ines Polonius, & Gustavo Lasala is an excellent distillation of the new type of economic development that rural communities are pursuing - and the important role that #CDFIs are playing in bringing it to reality. Important read. #RuralDevelopment #ReimagineRural

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🌟 Launching: Trillion $ Impact Community I've created an exclusive LinkedIn group focused on building companies that can positively impact billions of lives while generating substantial returns. Here in the link to join: https://lnkd.in/dneNBGsM Before requesting to join, please: Watch our vision video at tiseed.com Consider if you're passionate about combining massive scale with meaningful impact Be ready to actively engage in discussions and knowledge sharing This isn't about numbers – it's about bringing together committed innovators, leaders, and purpose-driven investors who genuinely want to shape the future. Initially, I'll personally review all membership requests and moderate discussions to maintain the community's focus and quality. 💡 Ready to explore how we can create trillion-dollar impact together? Visit tiseed.com, then request to join our group. #Trillion$Impact #Innovation #SocialImpact #Entrepreneurship #Leadership

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My latest piece for The Brazilian Report explores the shifting dynamics in Latin America highlighted by the #G20Summit in Rio. President Biden’s absence from the leaders’ photo and his efforts to address shared climate goals with Brazil’s President Lula stand in stark contrast to China’s strategic and long-term investments in the region. Key ideas below. - U.S. President Joe Biden’s presence at the #G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro was expected to spotlight his administration’s foreign policy achievements. Instead, it underscored the United States' waning influence in Latin America. - This year’s summit revealed two competing narratives. On the one hand, Biden celebrated progress with Brazilian President Lula on shared climate goals, marking a historic first as a sitting U.S. president visiting the #Amazon rainforest. On the other hand, the G20 Summit cast a spotlight on #China’s growing dominance in Latin America. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s high-profile engagements, underscored by grand welcomes and ambitious economic agreements, highlighted Beijing’s expanding trade and investment footprint in the region. - Latin America’s vast reserves of #lithium, #copper, oil, and freshwater have made it a battleground in the contest between global superpowers. Beijing’s approach has been deliberate and strategic — its investments range from a USD 3.5 billion mega port in #Peru to a series of multibillion-dollar projects in Brazil, including the first renminbi loan signed by Brazil’s National Development Bank (#BNDES) during Xi’s visit with Lula. These ventures aim to weave Latin America into China’s economic orbit. - In contrast, U.S. gestures, like Biden’s announcement of helicopters and conservation funds, appeared outdated. - This imbalance should serve as a wake-up call for the U.S., especially with Trump’s return to the presidency. - While the G20 has faced criticism for its lack of ideological cohesion, it remains an essential forum for global dialogue — a rare space where Western powers, rising economies, and strategic rivals like Russia and China interact on equal terms. - The G20’s durability lies in its pragmatism: while it doesn’t deliver sweeping transformations, it fosters incremental progress, a vital achievement in an era of global polarization. - Biden’s parting plea at the G20 for leaders to “keep going” will ring hollow without a coherent U.S. strategy to address its diminishing influence. Latin America’s nations are asserting their agency, demanding partnerships that align with their priorities — from climate action to technological inclusion. For Washington, this means moving beyond symbolic gestures and reactionary measures toward sustained, meaningful engagement. - Whether the United States can adapt to these shifting dynamics will determine its place in an increasingly multipolar world. How Washington addresses this challenge will define its global leadership for decades to come.

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Tomorrow at ANDE2024! Join Miller Center's Executive Director Brigit Helms for an interactive workshop exploring the funding gap for impact-focused startups, especially in emerging markets. We'll dive into how traditional VC models are misaligned with the needs of social enterprises and discuss innovative finance structures that prioritize impact over unicorn-hunting. Learn from practitioners how to leverage philanthropic capital, create flexible financing instruments, and balance financial returns with transformative, systemic change. Let’s explore how catalytic funds can help close the $1.1 trillion funding gap for mission-driven startups! https://bit.ly/3ZeBGjo

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Big news! Our research program director, Marcela Angel Lalinde, has recently been selected as a member of the first cohort of Big Bets Climate Fellows. The Fellowship, which was established as part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s billion-dollar climate strategy, will provide fellows with programming, networking, and professional development opportunities as they work to implement and scale their bold climate solutions. Marcela's project was developed in the city of Mocoa in the Colombian Andean-Amazon Piedmont in collaboration with with MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Corpoamazonia (Corporación Autónoma Regional para el Desarrollo de la Amazonia), Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, and CAF -banco de desarrollo de América Latina y el Caribe-, among others. It aims to develop a community-based early warning system for landslides that leverages integrated climate risk data collection, modeling, and forecasting, and can potentially serve as a model for other regions facing similar climate risks. Congrats, Marcela! 🎉 #ClimateAdaptation #CommunityBasedPlanning #EcologicalRestoration

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To create lasting change, policies and initiatives need reliable financing. The “Rewiring Education: The Climate-Education Nexus” Report provides recommendations on how funders and stakeholders can contribute to leveraging education for climate action. You can download the report here: www.rewiredsummit.org #Financing #Funding #RewiringEducation #ClimateAction #SustainableSolutions #RewirEdSummit

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WEBINAR: Partnership for Resilience and Economic Growth (PREG) II Impact Evaluation: Endline Survey Findings 📅 October 15, 2024 | 9:00 – 10:00 AM ET | Online Join REAL to discover outcomes of the PREG II project, a major 5-year USAID investment designed to enhance resilience and spur economic growth. This #webinar will dive into findings from the PREG II endline evaluation, addressing how interventions enhanced households' #resilience to shocks and impacted three key well-being outcomes of #FoodSecurity #Poverty reduction, & #ChildMalnutrition. Don’t miss insights from lead researchers and the opportunity to ask questions! 🔗 Register to secure your spot: https://bit.ly/3Nef5Mg

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Native seed collector networks in Brazil are sowing social innovations for transformative change. That's the compelling conclusion of an insightful and instructive new piece of research, highlighting the significant impact and co-benefits that natural ecosystem restoration can have on marginalized communities and the environment. It also validates our funding strategy that we at Good Energies Foundation have embraced for over a decade, as it has yielded significant impact for people, climate and nature. It has literally sown the seeds of social change. As highlighted in the research, native seed collectors networks in Brazil received a total of US$ 12 million in investments between 2018 and 2021, contributing to the production of 180 tonnes of native seeds. These networks also produced significant socio-economic co-benefits, generating a total income of US$ 1.01 million for 997 seed collectors, 46% of whom are from traditional communities and marginalized groups. Furthermore, 55% of these collectors are women, and 23% rely solely on seed collection as their only source of income. Equally crucial is the fact that these networks have effectively activated local agency capacity. This is exactly where the research offers its most significant contribution to the debate of sustainable development and social change. The "scale of impact" of these social innovations is highlighted at three levels. First, the native seed networks are "scaling-deep", that is changing values and empowering local agents. Second, they are "scaling-out", that is inspiring agents in other geographies. Third, they are "scaling-up", that is significantly influencing policies that promote socially inclusive landscape restoration. This three-dimensional scaling underscores the catalytic power of these restoration networks - and therefore deserves widespread replication. In other words, #nature is not a problem to solve, but a relationship to have. Our gratitude to the lead author, Aurelio Padovezi, Ph.D. for this highly valuable contribution! Also thanks to the co-authors, Cristina Adams, Robin Chazdon, Maria Alice Mendonça, laura secco, Eduardo Malta Campos Filho, Alexandre Sampaio, Edjane Damasceno, Natalia Albuquerque, Maria Eduarda Camargo and Fatima Piña-Rodrigues. This new piece of research provides evidence that natural ecosystem restoration is a tremendous, if not the largest scale, most cost-effective and socially most significant, near-term opportunity for #climate mitigation. Last but not least, our gratitude to the trailblazers of the restoration movement in #Brazil, from Rodrigo Junqueira and his colleagues at Instituto Socioambiental, from seeding the Rede de Sementes do Cerrado RSC to Redário; to Mariana Oliveira at WRI Brasil; and Miguel Calmon at Conservation International and PRETATERRA. Let us all restore deep, out and up! 🙏🏾🌎🌳 See full research below or download in the following link: https://lnkd.in/eVPBdN9B

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The most recent issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review explores how the traditional model of community development finance is limited by market conservatism and a focus on scale, rather than local control. It suggests we need a new paradigm that prioritizes impact over scale, emphasizes flexible and creative financing strategies, and empowers community voice. Invest Appalachia (IA) is a strong example of how to rebalance power between financial expertise and community voice. As a nonprofit, it serves as the manager and general partner for the IA fund. Rather than becoming a CDFI itself, IA, like LTR, contracted with a CDFI, Locus, as the IA fund’s investment manager. Locus supports back-office functions of the IA fund, including portfolio management, underwriting, and coordinating third-party service provision (e.g., servicing, accounting, and administration). By following new models, the field has an opportunity to build a consensus around a new approach to financing community development, so that it can finally tackle the problems it was created to solve. Read the full story here: https://shorturl.at/mblLn

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We couldn’t agree more with Asad Mahmood and Nanno Kleiterp on the pivotal role philanthropy plays in derisking for-profit social enterprises serving low-income communities. By providing the initial funding and flexibility, philanthropy lays the foundation needed for these businesses to scale, take on more risk, and drive impact. Acumen has been at the forefront for 23 years, blending philanthropic capital with investments to support entrepreneurs solving some of the world’s toughest problems. We have seen firsthand how the right combination of funding can unlock innovation and build sustainable businesses. Check out this article in NextBillion to learn more about the role of philanthropy in driving social change.

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The work for lasting systemic change calls on social impact funders to regularly reevaluate and map out strategies across a changing, complex landscape. Learn how funders can reflect, review and refine their portfolios to leverage progress. https://bit.ly/49wjOTT

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Kicking off NYC Climate Week and UNGA meetings at the Climate Justice: A Global Vision for the Future panel organized by Columbia | SIPA Institute of Latin American Studies. As Professor Jeffrey Sachs said Latin America has to work together, in particular the Amazon Basin countries. In this world you need scale for solutions and diplomacy. We need a scale of cooperation that is unprecedented to protect the Amazon Rainforest. And as Brasil’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva mentioned, applied research is vital to anticipate solutions related to climate injustice. United Nations Columbia | SIPA #sustainability #leadership #SDGs

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The Energy for Peace Global Development Alliance, a collaboration between ISA, Ecopetrol, SUNCOLOMBIA, and USAID/Colombia, demonstrates the vital role blended finance can play in catalyzing private sector investment to deliver clean energy to hard-to-reach communities that are critical for peace and development. Over the next five years, the alliance is expected to provide sustainable electricity for nearly 8,000 people and six producer clusters in conflict-affected communities in Colombia, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating an estimated $6 million from increased sales of goods and services. For development professionals that may be interested in building on this blended finance model, this report details the innovative design process and critical components driving the model's success. https://lnkd.in/ep6-gEjQ

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🥂 Join us as a Finance for Biodiversity Pledge and celebrate at COP16! For this round of new signatories, we are extending the sign-up deadline for the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge, allowing financial institutions to join us in Cali, Colombia for COP16! 📣 Be part of the finance sector mobilisation and showcase your commitment to the protection of biodiversity at COP16. Sign-up! 👉 https://lnkd.in/gMnqNzvx 🗓 The sign-up period is now open and will close on September 6th. Read more on becoming a signatory before COP16 👉 https://lnkd.in/g2f3HxNr Why participate at COP16 as a Financial Institution? In addition to the 196 country representatives, there will also be high-level attendance by ministers and heads of state. Besides the official negotiating countries, there will also be non-party stakeholders. Non-state actors attend the UN conference to demonstrate action and progress on voluntary commitments, drive political ambition, and build collaborations on the path to nature recovery. Be Part of the Plan! #FinanceForBioPledge #COP16 #BePartOfThePlan

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