NAINA Subberwal Batra, chief executive officer of Asian social impact platform AVPN, said increasing social financing is crucial to maintaining growth, eradicating poverty and responding to climate change.
This comes as AVPN prepares to hold its 2026 Global Conference on Aug. 25–27 in New Delhi, India.
Batra said that a $26-trillion philanthropic funding gap in Asia is staggering.
”I think we have depended too long on organizations from the West to support us, but we see already with shrinking overseas development assistance, the war in the Gulf, the issues with other conflict areas in the West, the capital that was coming from the West was shrinking and now it is shrinking even faster. So I think it is important that Asian organizations actually now walk the talk,” Batra told The Manila Times.
She said the upcoming conference, to be held at the Bharat Mandapam, will unveil a playbook for Asia’s own participation, noting that the financing gap will not go away and will get bigger and bigger.
”But I really believe that the capital actually exists in Asia, and it is important that we actually use our own capital to address the issues that are actually happening in Asia. So we feel that the conference will reflect this ecosystem where there is capital that is existing,” Batra said.
She said the war in the Middle East and climate change have a huge impact on philanthropy.
”It is very important for networks like ours to realize in real time what are the challenges that we are facing in our societies and how can we as a network bring different people together to really brainstorm on solutions and also to support governments as they look to address these challenges?” Batra said.
She said that the decision to hold the conference in India has a sound rationale.
”It is a good place to bring together government, businesses, philanthropies and the actual implementing organizations on the ground so that coordination and partnership can happen in order for us to come up with an action plan,” Batra said.
A key feature of the AVPN Global Conference is the Impact Investing Day, with the main focus on how corporate enterprises can invest for social impact.
Filipino social enterprises, Batra said, should also use the AVPN conference as a platform to build partnerships for impact.
”We are hoping that the AVPN conference will provide some opportunities for Filipino organizations, whether they are foundations or nonprofits or social enterprises, to find opportunities to build coalitions, to gain knowledge and also to mobilize capital,” she said.