Yerevan/Mediamax/. “How can we finance the next 15 years of development work? In what ways should true innovators be engaged in the development process? How viable is impact investment for business and governments alike?” - these were only a few of the many questions discussed at the very first global summit on impact investment for development, held in Yerevan on March 21-22.

The summit has been hosted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Armenia and INSEAD’s Social Impact Initiative as a knowledge partner. Together they have brought together some of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, impact investors and development practitioners.

During the two-day event UNDP officials, social entrepreneurs, impact business leaders, representatives of the government and academia held interactive thematic discussions exploring the potential of leveraging impact investment, social enterprise, and impact business to achieve the universally adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and pushing global development to a new qualitative level. The participants of the Summit also attended the TEDxSalon event, with Karen Karapetyan, Prime Minister of Armenia, as a key speaker.

In the past decade, the field of impact investing has mushroomed. J.P. Morgan’s 2015 survey of the sector found that 60 billion USD of impact investments are under management by the firms surveyed. 41 % of those investing were making long-term investments (over 10 years).

According to Bradley Busetto, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Armenia, this project is truly ground-breaking both for UNDP and for Armenia. “We are frontrunners in the innovation sphere. We recognize the value of engaging innovators in the development process and creating spaces for experimentation, sharing of ideas, thus allowing success to flourish – this Summit is just one of these spaces. All our partners, INSEAD, Impact Hub Armenia, AGBU, the TUMO Centre for Creative Technologies, have immense contribution in this success, inspiring the country with creativity and entrepreneurism,” he noted.

Non-conventional approaches to development are vital to the achievement of the Agenda 2030, in particular the commitment to leave no one behind. UNDP and the Government Armenia have already taken the first step in this direction. The government-affiliated Center for Strategic Initiatives, the government’s own “reform accelerator”, will host the first-of-its-kind national SDG Lab in Armenia, with the support of UNDP and the Stanford Change Labs. The SDG Lab within the Center will bring together a cross section of bright minds, who have the capacity to think “out of the box” and propose new ways of addressing Armenia’s most entrenched socio-economic and environmental challenges.