We’re delighted to release the NESsT 2024 Annual Report, highlighting a year defined by far-reaching impact and transformative growth. For nearly three decades, NESsT has worked at the nexus of people, profit, and the planet. In 2024, we reached a milestone that speaks to this mission: since its founding, NESsT has positively impacted the lives of over 3.4 million people from communities around the world.

Sweden joins as a donor to NESsT’s long-standing South America acceleration program, enabling the program to increase the number of enterprises it supports and to expand its efforts in Colombia, Peru, and into Brazil.

Our work on the ground in Brazil’s Amazon region has consistently shown that increasing women's participation is critical for the socio-bioeconomy to become a robust and sustainable national development strategy. 

In celebration of Women’s History Month, we are spotlighting the stories of three women entrepreneurs at the helm of enterprises in the NESsT portfolio in Central & Eastern Europe and South America.

We spoke to our portfolio managers and entrepreneurs in the region to uncover the lessons learned and insights gained from three years of close-up acceleration and collaboration in the region catalyzing wide-ranging, innovative business models and supporting the financial independence and stability of people from diverse backgrounds. 

In this blog, we speak with bioeconomy entrepreneurs to better understand the challenges they face when applying for funding from multiple sources. Read it now to learn how complex application criteria and reporting demands impact their businesses and explore actionable recommendations for how the funding community can help ensure more equitable, inclusive access to financing. 

The next iteration of NESsT’s accelerator program in Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on Poland and Romania, will be backed by our long-standing partners, IKEA Social Entrepreneurship and Cisco Foundation. This phase will accompany 26 companies on their growth and impact journeys, providing capacity building, knowledge sharing, and mentoring with industry experts at NESsT, IKEA Social Entrepreneurship, and Cisco Foundation.

NESsT’s recent study and extensive research identifies that the term ‘bioeconomy’ is often broadly interpreted by bioeconomy funders and global policymakers, sometimes straying far from a vision of environmental stewardship. We interviewed Indigenous leaders and entrepreneurs as part of ongoing efforts to deepen our understanding of their perspectives, vision and expectations of the bioeconomy as not just as an economic model, but as a way of life rooted deeply in ancestral tradition.  

At COP16, NESsT reinforced its ongoing commitment to improving access to funding for locally-led bioeconomy initiatives in the Amazon. This work, including its plans to invest $6 million in seed-stage financing through 2025 to support these efforts, was recently featured in Carbon Pulse.

This blog delves into the methodology behind NESsT’s publication to improve the targeting, accessibility, efficacy, and efficiency of investments in the Amazon bioeconomy; it homes in on NESsT’s firm intention to bring local voices to global discussions around Amazon bioeconomy funding and explores how NESsT anchored the publication in authentic narratives and diverse Amazonian contexts while tailoring the message for the international financing community.

As part of its ongoing commitment to address the pressing challenges faced by entrepreneurs in Latin America, particularly in the Andes-Amazon region, the NESsT Lirio Fund is expanding its reach into Brazil. The fund is investing in small and medium-sized enterprises that create dignified income opportunities and improve local livelihoods while contributing to environmental conservation.

NESsT și Fundația Gordon și Betty Moore se asociază pentru a consolida și a extinde întreprinderile populațiilor indigene și ale comunităților locale (IPLC) din Amazon care contribuie la bioeconomie și la conservarea mediului.

Ludmila și Anatolyi lucrează la Box Elyte din 2022, când, împreună cu fiica lor, au fost nevoiți să își părăsească locuințele din cauza invaziei Rusiei în Ucraina. Astăzi, de Ziua mondială a refugiaților, împărtășim povestea lor în acest eseu fotografic.

NESsTde un an relevă informații esențiale pentru a direcționa mai bine investițiile către populațiile indigene și comunitățile locale.

Cele nouă întreprinderi care se vor alătura Programului de accelerare pentru America de Sud, co-creat de NESsT și IKEA Social Entrepreneurship, sunt pregătite să impulsioneze dezvoltarea durabilă și creșterea favorabilă incluziunii în întreaga regiune.

În februarie se împlinesc doi ani de când Rusia a invadat Ucraina în 2022. 

As of February 2024, an estimated 3.7 million people are still displaced within Ukraine’s borders, and 6.5 million refugees are in countries such as Poland and Romania. The reality is, although it has been two years since the crisis began, millions of refugees in the region still need support to find dignified work that allows them to feed their families.

NESsT are un portofoliu de 50 de întreprinderi cu sediul în Amazon. În ultimii cinci ani, managerii portofoliului NESsT au lucrat îndeaproape cu aceste întreprinderi pentru a monitoriza, măsura și crește impactul acestora. Recent, NESsT a căutat să dezvolte metode mai detaliate pentru a înțelege cultura și contextul datelor pe care le colectează, în special pentru întreprinderile din Amazon.

SOCAP 2023 a avut loc în San Francisco, California, în perioada 23-25 octombrie. Nicole Etchart, NESsT Co-fondator și CEO, a co-prezentat sesiunea "Scaling Impact Through Collaboration: Rallying Stakeholders Around Blended Finance", alături de Nele Bouchier, Chief Communications & Public Affairs Officer pentru IKEA în Statele Unite, și Charu Adesnik, director executiv al Cisco Foundation și director al Social Innovation Investments la Cisco Systems, Inc.

Diaspora.Black, o întreprindere socială din sectorul turismului și al evenimentelor, se alătură inițiativei NESsT Racial Equity Initiative. Cu ajutorul investiției NESsT, Diaspora.Black va oferi formare și finanțare antreprenorilor locali afro, promovând o comunitate dedicată extinderii rutelor turistice care aduc mai multă vizibilitate istoriei și culturii afro-brăilienilor.