Fighting extreme poverty through entrepreneurship

The elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalization combats extreme poverty using entrepreneurial means, generating measurable positive impact. From 2025 to 2027, the Vontobel Foundation will be a member of the elea Philanthropic Investors’ Circle.  

elea invests philanthropic capital and provides strategic support to entrepreneurially led organizations that are creating sustainable societal impact. These various organizations are offering people living in extreme poverty access to employment, markets, and value chains.

Operating at the intersection of charitable giving and impact investing, elea occupies a space known as philanthropic impact investing. The aim of this approach is for impact-driven enterprises to achieve long-term societal outcomes while generating positive financial returns. As a non-profit foundation, elea puts social impact at the forefront of its investments, working closely with patient capital providers to help them gain access, step-by-step, to the commercial impact capital market over time. Typically, elea remains involved in these entrprises for five to eight years as an active investor and usually holds a seat on the company board of directors.

The elea model comprises active investment management, strategic guidance for its impact enterprises, as well as maintaining a network of philanthropic investors, which includes the Vontobel Foundation. Particularly active in sectors such as agriculture, retail, vocational training, and climate and livelihoods, elea works in a number of regions in Africa (e.g., Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa), Latin America (e.g., Peru and Argentina), and Asia (e.g., India and the Philippines).

Through this entrepreneurial approach, elea supports the development of impact enterprises that are locally anchored and tackling local problems. They provide people living in poverty with access to work, education, services, and value chains, ultimately improving their living conditions. Over the long term, the goal is for these enterprises to evolve into attractive investment opportunities for commercial impact capital.

A vital addition to the financial support elea provides is the strategic know-how it can also give to its selected impact enterprises: for every franc invested, another franc is allocated to the strategic development of the companies in elea’s portfolio. Together with these entrepreneurs, elea elaborates a Value Creation Plan that sets both business and social impact goals for the companies, thus forming the basis for a close and collaborative partnership.

To track each impact enterprise’s development and contribution to reducing extreme poverty in detail, elea has developed its own Impact Measurement Method. This methodology also allows comparison across sometimes very different investment initiatives. Since it helps detect issues early so that an effective response can be defined in a timely manner, it serves as a crucial management tool.