The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), British Council and the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) are honoured to invite you to join us at the AVPN Annual Conference for the Strategic Policy Dialogue in Singapore from 24th- 28th June 2019.

Social enterprise and impact investment are increasingly seen as powerful ways to address some of the more pressing social and environmental challenges faced in the Asia-Pacific region. ESCAP, British Council and AVPN are working in partnership to support the growth of social entrepreneurship and investment in the region as a means of supporting the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

During the week of the AVPN Conference ESCAP and the British Council will be hosting a Strategic Policy Dialogue which will bring together a targeted group of countries which are progressing in developing social economy policy. This will be an opportunity to present and discuss the progress that has been made and put in place action plans for progressing the policy agenda beyond the conference.

Strategic Policy Dialogue 2019

The aim of this year’s policy dialogue is to move from dialogue to action. ESCAP and British Council have been working with governments to deliver research and support in building an effective environment to grow the impact economy.

In Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka we have recently published social enterprise landscape survey’s, which have set out ideas for how to support the growth of social enterprise and unlock the right type of capital to help them grow and scale. In Pakistan we have recently supported the publication of a social enterprise ‘issue paper’ which has presented a number of recommendations around developing a social enterprise policy, whilst in Bangladesh our work builds on a number of years of engagement which has included policy analysis and a social enterprise survey along with dialogue with government actors.

The strategic dialogue will be designed to work with policy makers in these countries to implement their ideas and strategies and agree how best this might be achieved.