Money alone might improve extreme poverty; economic justice requires more. When Upaya looks for companies that create dignified jobs for the poor, we evaluate questions of reliability, safety, and fundamental respect in addition to the economic benefits.
Since 2017, Upaya Social Ventures has been at the forefront of this work to empower early-stage entrepreneurs through its Dignified Jobs Accelerator, equipping them with tools and knowledge to become investment ready for impact investors. The accelerator builds on Upaya’s ongoing work to provide investment and support to entrepreneurs creating dignified jobs for people in extreme poverty.
Upaya’s impact measurement framework helps establish a common understanding across teams on the fund’s impact measurement approach. Our ambition is not just to strengthen our own impact performance but to generate insights and learnings for the ecosystem at large on the factors affecting job quality for the extremely poor.
Upaya has done something novel in the past few weeks – novel for us, at least – we’ve written checks to our donors… and it feels great. After 11 years of working on and fine-tuning our model, recoverable grant donors are getting funds returned to them because the investment that we made has returned capital to us. While this is good news for the donors, I believe that it is a critical inflection point not only for Upaya but as a bridge between the nonprofit sector and a more sustainable for-profit world. Let me explain what I mean.
This Mother’s Day, as two working mothers at Upaya, we reflected on what it would take to create dignified jobs for mothers from extremely poor households. Despite their hardships, these women have the strength and ability to address the difficult battle of being a worker, a woman, and a mother, but they can’t do it alone.
How can dignified jobs build resilience for the extreme poor who are more greatly impacted by climate change?
Companies like Resham Sutra are using solar-powered reeling and spinning machines to help silk producers. This not only reduces the drudgery of reeling but also grows their income through increased productivity and reduced costs.
“There hasn’t been a better time to be a woman entrepreneur”, said Ekta Jaju, Founder of ONganic in one of the conversations we had with her last year. This stuck with me. And it’s absolutely true, but I only partly agree.
Upaya Social Ventures is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
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