The 2023 iteration of AVPN’s Constellations Awards focuses on collaborations that advance gender equality in Asia. With huge gaps still existing within the sector, strong, deliberate, and proactive collaborative action is required in order to unlock capital to create a more equitable world for women and girls in Asia.

Launched by AVPN in 2020, the Constellations Awards look to celebrate the ways in which social investors across Asia collaborate to address the complex challenges in the region. Over the last few years, the Constellations Awards have shone a spotlight on the positive impacts of 15 projects across Asia, with the awardees having established shared aims, and pooled resources to face challenges head-on through collaborations that pioneer solutions at scale.

The first collaborative solution to receive recognition through the Constellations Awards is Developing Online Sales Skills to Improve Women’s Livelihoods, as women entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia are often restricted to the small-scale, informal sector which presents significant challenges when it comes to economic prosperity.

Initiated and overseen by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), implemented by Kopernik which draws on the organisation’s experience in implementing capacity-sharing programs for small and medium-sized enterprises and underserved communities across Indonesia, and further supported by Aisyiyah which, as the national partner, provides an extensive network of women micro-entrepreneurs, the JICA Partnership Program (JPP) aims to enhance the online sales skills and competitiveness of women-led micro-enterprises in Yogyakarta Province, Indonesia.

The second project honoured in the Constellations Awards is Manyata. The initiative which is the first of its kind has led the way in setting a certification benchmark and evidence-based frameworks for providing high-quality care for mothers in India since 2013. With around 24,000 women dying every year in India due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, and inconsistent standards in care leading to disparities in health outcomes, Manyata envisions that each woman in India receives consistent, safe, and respectful care during and after childbirth.

Manyata has partnered with the Public Health Department, Government of Maharashtra to launch LaQshya-Manyata, which now runs as a successful public-private partnership providing quality maternal care in the remotest corners in the Indian state of Maharashtra, and has also collaborated with the likes of National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare (NABH) and Health Sector Skill Council (HSSC) to train health workers and allied staff. The program has directly benefitted more than 550,000 women, and subsequently their families, along with training over 13,000 healthcare workers, and is currently active in 23 states/UTs of India, with over 2,000 certified private hospitals providing maternity services.

Skill Impact Bond (SIB) is the final laureate of the 2023 Constellations Awards, and aims to benefit 50,000 young people, 60 per cent of whom will be women by focusing on outcome delivery to fuel training, employability and job retention, aiming to do so by providing flexible and risk-taking capital to training partners.

The SIB was launched in 2021 as India’s first, and the world’s largest, development impact bond for skilling and employment. This came about as a result of fewer than one in four women looking for work in India, despite significant investment in the public, private and non-profit sectors, a situation that was exacerbated by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in which women were seven times as likely to lose their job during the national lockdown as men.

The first cohort of Skill Impact Bond indicates a promising retention rate, where one in two women who have enrolled in the training have continued to work in wage employment for three months. After completing the training, many women and girls continue to find jobs and regain a sense of empowerment and financial independence, which is creating positive knock-on effects for the rest of the community.

AVPN is the largest network of social investors in Asia, comprising over 600 diverse members across 33 markets. Its mission is to increase the flow and effectiveness of financial, human, and intellectual capital in Asia by enabling members to channel resources towards impact.

Simon Hungin is a freelance writer that supports Alliance magazine.