IIX-N-Peace Innovation Challenge: Where Capitalism and Peacebuilding Converge
For eons, the world has been fragmented by conflict over divided beliefs (religious violence), divided boarders (wars over territories), divided power (battles for resources). Governments, politicians and donor agencies have peacebuilding as their number one agenda, taking a top-down approach and repeatedly asking: ‘How can we resolve conflict? How can we accelerate recovery? How can we avoid the next World War?’
Maybe, we have been limiting the dialogue by asking the wrong questions.
The IIX N-Peace Innovation Challenge seeks to redefine the dominant narrative by catalyzing a bottom-up approach to building peace that is inclusive, sustainable and scalable. Impact Investment Exchange Asia (IIX) defines ‘peacebuilding’ as a multi-dimensional term to reframe the questions: ‘How can we transcends immediate crisis and conflict resolution to create long-term peace outcomes that reduce the risk of relapsing into conflict? How can we strengthen national capacities to empower ordinary people to become solutions for peace instead of victims of war? How can we transform the peacebuilding agenda by accelerating economic growth and systemic resilience to violence?’
Supported by the United Nations Development Programme and executed by IIX in partnership with the N-Peace Network, the IIX N-Peace Challenge will select 6 Impact Enterprises as winners, based on their ability to shift the paradigm of peace using market based solutions that (i) view women and youth as change-agents, leveraging their strategic insights, unparalleled power and deep understanding to create inclusive peace; (ii) use market based solutions to create financially sustainable models that can create transformative, sustainable peace that continue to achieve outcomes over the long term; and (iii) leverage the power of innovation and technology to create replicable models that have the potential to transform millions of lives by creating scalable peace and achieving systemic change. Impact Enterprises (IE), entities that seek a double bottom line to achieve positive social outcomes above financial sustainability, effectively embody these solutions paving the way to revolutionize the peace landscape and create tremendous, transformative change across the region.
The most innovative dimension of the Challenge is it will effectively act as a platform for peacebuilding and capitalism to converge. The target countries for the Challenge are 6 high-risk or post-conflict Asia countries: Afghanistan, Indonesia, Nepal, Myanmar, Pakistan and the Philippines. The 6 winners, one from each target geography, will be invited to attend a special event hosted by UNDP in New York City on October 23 2015, where they will have the opportunity to share their work with leaders from the development space and the private sector. Key challenges currently faced by peacebuilding actors in the 6 target geographies are outlined in the graph below (based on a survey with relevant stakeholders conducted by IIX: sample size of responses: 125), which highlights the main issue is lack of access to capital to scale the impact of long term, transformative peacebuilding solutions. With this in mind, IIX will also embrace the winners as part of the IIX Community and potentially provide them with the technical assistance to scale their model, an Impact Assessment to measure their impact and access to its network of +400 Impact Investors to raise capital required to sustain results. The application portal is located here (http://iixnpeacechallenge.asiaiix.com/) and the deadline is September 18th 2015.
Key sectors include sustainable agriculture, financial inclusion, access to water, affordable healthcare, education and livelihoods, among others. IEs in these sectors are well positioned to address systemic gaps in the peacebuilding spectrum by using market-based solutions that can drive results over the long-term. The graphic below illustrates the nexus between peacebuilding and IEs, with brief explanations of how high-impact sectors are positioned to advance holistic socio-economic progress along three dimensions – Foundations of Wellbeing, Access to Opportunities and Basic Human Needs. It also describes how these interventions can have positive outcomes on the peacebuilding agenda within the Challenge’s focus areas: Women, Youth, Technology and Innovation.
In an era where sustainable development is the dominant narrative, it no longer suffices to take a myopic approach to advancing the peace agenda. By redefining the way the world uses finance to focus not just on an entity's bottom line, but to add what is known as a double-bottom line (profit + people) can forever change the way markets function. The IIX N-Peace Innovation Challenge aims to fundamentally shift the Asian peacebuilding paradigm by leveraging this basic philosophy. The Challenge marks the dawn of a new era that will revolutionize not just existing peacebuilding efforts that concentrated on short term recovery, but also mobilize large-scale capital (from the private sector) and new actors (high-impact entrepreneurs) at the grassroots to advance the age of conscious capitalism in a collaborative manner.
If you know a high impact SME or Social Enterprise in these countries, please ask them to join the Challenge now. For more details visit our FAQ page here (http://iixnpeacechallenge.asiaiix.com/faq/) or send us an e-mail at innovatepeace@asiaiix.com. More Peace to You All!