Scaling solutions together

Old growth forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. The Făgăraș Mountains in Romania are unmatched in Europe for their natural forests with about 10% pristine systems. These forests are essential in mitigating climate change, providing a huge carbon reservoir. Additionally, rural communities around Făgăraș Mountains are experiencing out-migration due to lack of economic opportunities. To conserve biodiversity and support economic development, a landscape approach is needed. FCC's approach in Romania is unique, combining conservation, ecological education, employment opportunities, and economic development based on conservation and climate change mitigation.

UBS Optimus Foundation support for the program over the next three years will contribute to the conservation of 3,500 hectares of old growth forest, and restoration of 250 hectares of grassland and forest. The funding will support 31 local enterprises in business development plans and/or certification, and benefit over 800 people in the local area per annum, including over 300 children receiving ecological education and a junior ranger program.

BCL is enabling a systemic shift in the collaboration between communities, civil society, and federal, state, and municipal governments to ensure literacy at the right age for all Brazilian children.

In 2023, BCL reached 17 states, with successful expansion to Bahia, Paraná, Pará, Paraíba, São Paulo and Tocantins. That took the initiative to 3,827 municipalities, covering over three million students in the 1st and 2nd grades of primary school (approximately 68% of the country’s public-school students in these grades). The federal government also made literacy at the right age a priority. The government launched the National Commitment for Children’s Literacy in the first half of the year, a program closely aligned with the foundations of BCL’s work, which will enhance the work conducted in states and municipalities.

During the past decade, access to kindergarten has been steadily increasing in China, but the teaching quality is still very low in rural areas. To support early childhood development and help rural children access equal education opportunities, in 2023, UBS Optimus Foundation collaborated with CDRF to pilot an innovative, integrated research and training model in Bijie City, Guizhou Province.

Through local-based teacher management and research system building, online and offline training sessions, and low-cost toys and teaching tools, CDRF’s Enlightening the Future program aims to improve capacity for frontline kindergarten teachers in villages, directly benefitting about 2,400 students in 50 kindergartens. There is also the potential to extend the model to other remote villages in rural China through policy advocacy.

The Malawian Ministry of Education has allocated USD 15 million of Global Partnership for Education (GPE) multiplier funds for Imagine Worldwide’s tabletbased foundational literacy and numeracy program called Building Education Foundations through Innovations and Technology (BEFIT). This is a concrete indication of the government’s commitment to scale up the program in all 6,000 primary schools in Malawi in six years and is one of the most ambitious scale-ups with government in the region.

As of December 2023, the BEFIT program successfully rolled out activities in 500 primary schools for 300,000 Standard 1-4 learners across 18 of the 34 education districts in Malawi. BEFIT has been incorporated into the National Primary School Calendar with time slots totaling 90 minutes allocated for Standards 1 and 2, and 105 minutes for Standard 3 and 4.

Luminos Fund

Worldwide, over a quarter billion children are not enrolled in school. Liberia struggles with one of the highest rates of out-of-school children in the world. The Luminos Fund’s Second Chance program uses an accelerated learning program (covering the first three years of the Liberian national curriculum in only 10 months), community mobilization and capacity building to identify out-of-school students, get them up to speed and prepare schools to accept them.

In 2023, the UBS Optimus Foundation supported a randomized controlled trial of the program during the 2022–2023 school year by IDinsight. Results show that in one year, a Luminos student learns 90% of what the average Liberian child will learn in their entire life. In addition, when looking at Luminos’ data in the context of the World Bank, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel’s “Smart Buys” report, Luminos scores highly for both cost-effectiveness and transformational learning compared to 40% of studies and interventions which have zero impact on learning.

Kidogo is building the leading network of quality, affordable childcare centers in East Africa’s lowincome communities. Kidogo uses an innovative social franchising approach to identify, train and support female entrepreneurs (Mamapreneurs) to start or grow childcare micro-businesses.

In 2023, Kidogo reached more than 38,000 children and onboarded 800 new Mamapreneurs, growing to 1,500 franchisees. They also grew their advisory role, working with the World Bank and the Republic of Congo on adoption of the model, leading multisectoral technical working groups with the Kenyan government in Mombasa and Nakuru, and participating in the development of the National Integrated Early Childhood Development Policy.

Young people from underserved backgrounds in the UK face multiple barriers. Black pupils have the lowest combined English and Maths GCSE pass rate of any major ethnic group. The Office of National Statistics reports that the unemployment rate for young Black people is three times higher than the overall youth unemployment rate. Founded by Sir Lewis Hamilton in 2021, Mission 44 is a charity working to transform the lives of young people from underserved backgrounds through progressive grantmaking, supporting collaboration and campaigning for change. Mission 44 is one of the few grantmaking organizations in the UK with a Black founder and CEO, a diverse trustee board and a diverse team.

In 2023, UBS Optimus Foundation continued supporting Mission 44 in its work, including growing its network of partners to 29 organizations changing the lives of young people, making its first international grants in the USA and Brazil, commissioning five pieces of research, and establishing a Youth Advisory Board to help shape the organization’s impact strategy.

The education system in India has been mainly focused on access rather than quality. Less than 50% of children in Grade 5 can read a Grade 2–level text and only 25% can do division.

In 2023, UBS Optimus Foundation invested in ConveGenius, an artificial intelligence driven EdTech¹ company working to advance educational equity and learning outcomes for children and youth in India. ConveGenius has 80 million registered student profiles across 460,000 schools in India. Research has shown that students using ConveGenius’s tools have a 65-70% probability of performing better than those on remedial, teacher training, personalized curricula and non-cognitive programs. The investment will support ConveGenius expansion to reach 100 million children across India and other emerging markets.

Kreedo offers a comprehensive preschool and early school solution that helps school owners in India set up or upgrade their own school. The Kreedo solution includes Montessori-based curriculum, materials, toys and an app with incrementally challenging games, as well as teacher and school management training and tools. An independent evaluation conducted has shown 38% improvement in literacy and numeracy skills in schools using Kreedo versus comparable schools.

UBS Optimus Foundation made its first equity investment in Kreedo (Kido Enterprises) in 2021 and has since doubled down with its latest followon investment in 2023. The investment will support the growing demand for their products and their expansion to new regions in India. The fresh equity infusion will enable work with over 2,500 schools within the next 2 to 3 years (compared to 500 schools currently), thereby reaching over 250,000 children.

The sexual exploitation and abuse of children through voluntourism is a complex issue that requires extensive intervention at local, national, regional and international levels. ECPAT International is a recognized authority on the sexual exploitation of children, with research and advocacy expertise at national and global levels, which positions them as a credible partner to engage on this problem.

The UBS Optimus Foundation supports ECPAT’s work to close gaps identified in legal and policy frameworks that hinder the prevention of sexual exploitation of children in voluntourism. As part of this work, together with the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children and the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, ECPAT International brought this issue to the UN General Assembly 2023. This spearheaded a global movement to stop unregulated and unskilled volunteering for the purpose of tourism that is harmful to children.

The government’s State of Children in Nepal 2023 report estimated that there were 11,202 children growing up in residential care in 418 registered children’s homes. Most of these orphanages are privately run, with direct links to orphanage tourism and voluntourism, and funding coming from outside Nepal. The UBS Optimus Foundation supports Hope and Homes for Children (HHC) in their efforts to reform Nepal’s child protection system so that institutional care is not the preferred intervention, preventing further proliferation of this harmful orphanage industry.

During 2023, HHC supported the forced closure of two institutions by the government by providing temporary protection to children removed from these institutions. To date, the program has directly contributed to 20 orphanage closures. HHC provided three institutions that were closed permanently during 2023 with technical support and training on family reintegration. During the course of the year, HHC helped reintegrate 34 children into their families and trained 462 professionals.

Justice and Care fights to end modern slavery by working with police to free victims, supporting survivors to rebuild their lives, and collaborating with both groups and the judiciary to bring perpetrators to court. The UBS Optimus Foundation supports Justice and Care’s work in Bangladesh, Romania and the UK.

During 2023, Justice and Care helped the Romanian Government introduce a minimum age of consent. In Bangladesh, it worked with the government to introduce national guidelines used by police and others to identify victims. Justice and Care’s UK Victim Navigator Programme, of which the UBS Optimus Foundation is a major donor, helped 70 victims walk free, 180 victims return home and 796 survivors receive care. Over 300 court cases were brought and 3,707 frontline professionals trained. Within this program, 94% of survivors are supported by a Navigator to improve survivor care as well as enhance survivor engagement with police investigations, compared to around 40% of those outside the program.

In Indonesia, children with disabilities are commonly placed in residential care rather than day school. A key reason is lack of appropriate support services and inclusive education opportunities. The UBS Optimus Foundation is supporting Perkins School for the Blind to address this problem. In close collaboration with the government’s National Ministry of Education and Culture and seven local partner programs, Perkins is working to transform orphanages into local outreach and day programs serving children with disabilities, enhance the quality of school and community education programs, and aid parents and caregivers of children with disabilities.

Since program establishment, zero new children of known families have been placed in residential care. In 2023, 1,249 children were served by the seven partner programs supported by Perkins. In addition, 503 parents or family members took part in a Perkins-organized training, activity or support group intended to enhance skills to support the children, while 614 educators and others participated in Perkins trainings over the course of the year.

For many low-income families, healthcare is unavailable, unaffordable and low quality. In Nairobi, Kenya, social enterprise Access Afya developed a healthcare network utilizing asset-light micro-clinics, telemedicine, patient health data and trustworthy pharmacies to engage patients from diagnosis to treatment. Access Afya’s model delivers affordable care to a large, underserved market, at a price point 2-4x lower than comparable alternatives. A digital and physical approach enables greater access and saves workers hours of waiting time. Quality is top ranked by 400 third-party providers and the net promoter score is three times higher than the national average.

The UBS Optimus Foundation is testing a new funding instrument, providing Access Afya with a grant to achieve investment readiness, while holding rights to purchase equity in the future at a reduced rate. This will help Access Afya expand its franchise while maintaining its focus on serving lower-income populations, at the same time helping to de-risk the investment for other investors with a higher return profile.

Africa Frontline First (AFF) aims to institutionalize and scale 200,000 professionalized community health workers (CHWs) across 10 African countries by 2030. AFF is a collaborative initiative that supports the financing and strengthening of integrated and sustainable community health service delivery to achieve health for all.

The UBS Optimus Foundation is providing financial and technical support to AFF to incorporate outcome-based funding design and identify AFF countries most fit to develop outcome-based elements into their financing plans. Ultimately, this will help mobilize new and better sources of financing for countries’ community health systems.

Traditional care systems are not meeting the needs of most patients living in poverty, resulting in millions of preventable deaths annually. Early access can avert nearly all deaths of children under five years old. Muso has documented rapid health improvements from its proactive care model, including sustaining a rate of child death in Mali lower than any country in sub-Saharan Africa for five years running.

Three core program components shrink the time from symptom onset to treatment. Community healthcare workers (CHWs) proactively search for households with pregnant mothers and children, provide care in the home and refer more complex cases to expanded government-run health centers. In 2023, Muso advocated in Mali for the successful recognition of CHWs as an official part of the health system. And in Côte D’Ivoire, Muso supported a new strategic plan for community health with concrete steps towards the professionalization of CHWs, with pay in alignment with the national minimum wage.

Globally, 280 million people are living with depressive disorders and, in lowincome countries, approximately 85% receive no treatment. Depression is one of the leading causes of disability among women in Africa. StrongMinds is working to address depression at scale, providing free group talk therapy to low-income women and adolescents with depression in Uganda and Zambia.

The impact? In schools, 63% of girls who received therapy saw improved grades after treatment and 96% of adolescents who completed therapy reported feeling more hopeful about life. StrongMinds continuously works to increase sustainability of the model and will roll out a new six-week therapy program in 2024. This change stems from a recent randomized controlled trial finding six-week therapy yielded outcomes for patients equal to or better than StrongMinds’s current eight-week therapy. The organization also managed to more than halve the cost per patient in only two years from USD 134 in 2021 to USD 51 in 2023.

In 2023, the UBS Optimus Foundation invested into social enterprise Elucid. Elucid provides health coverage to smallholder farmer families within supply chains of global companies – paid for by the global sourcing companies. For many farming families, this is the first time with healthcare coverage. Key outcomes are improved access to healthcare and protection from medical impoverishment. At the same time, Elucid aims to address the lack of reliable data from sourcing origins for sustainability reporting. This should, in turn, improve the assessment, mitigation and reporting of human rights issues in supply chains.

Elucid has over 12,000 cocoa smallholder farmers enrolled in healthcare plans in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar and Ecuador and is facilitating over 2,000 inpatient and outpatient visits per year. Expansion plans are already underway to scale the model into new regions in Africa and South America as well as into other supply chains.

Medical oxygen is a lifesaving medicine but is expensive and can be poorly distributed in rural areas, coupled with a lack of healthcare worker knowledge. Since 2014, Hewatele has built a credible track record of bringing medical oxygen to more than 200 public and private health facilities and an estimated 112,000 people, including 22,000 children.

The UBS Optimus Foundation extended its funding to Hewatele, a medical oxygen producer in Kenya, by taking a ~10% equity stake through a USD 20 million funding package with the US International Development Finance Corporation, Soros Economic Development Fund, Finnfund and Grand Challenges Canada. Hewatele will use the debt and equity funds raised to finance the building of a liquid oxygen manufacturing facility in the outskirts of Nairobi and development of regional distribution capacity in key regions of Kenya. Hewatele will also double its existing capacity at hospital-based sites to produce and distribute medical oxygen using pressurized gas cylinders.

The UBS Optimus Foundation has invested USD 43 million in impact investments cumulatively from 2018 up to the end of 2023. This includes outcomes contracts as well as direct equity and debt investments into impact enterprises. We have supported 15 impact enterprises, some of which are highlighted in the portfolio sections. Through impact investment, our objective is to unlock more capital to improve education, health and climate outcomes at scale, including through the use of blended finance.

The SDG Outcomes Initiative is investing USD 100 million in 15-20 SDG-aligned outcomes-based programs. The pioneering SDG Outcomes Initiative uses an innovative blended finance structure, where the UBS Optimus Foundation with donations from over 30 UBS clients is providing 20% first-loss capital to unlock additional impact-driven capital. Investors will receive returns linked directly to verified social and environmental outcomes, while any returns for the philanthropic funding will be recycled into future projects. The SDG Outcomes Initiative has made its first nine investments, with an anchor project in each of its focus themes: education, health, employment and the environment. The initiative has a diverse pipeline of projects under development. The UBS Optimus Foundation’s investment is together with the United States International Development Finance Corporation and British International Investment as anchor funders, as well as four family offices leading the private investment component.

The UBS Optimus Foundation is partnering with the 100x Impact Accelerator at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to support highimpact ventures tackling some of the world’s most pressing social challenges. The UBS Optimus Foundation is providing access to experts from within its network, in addition to the GBP 5 million follow-on funding to be deployed to select ventures to accelerate them on their journeys to scale. The 100x Impact Accelerator launched its first call for applications in January 2023, attracting over 1,300 aspiring social ventures from 96 countries, of which eight were selected to join its inaugural cohort. In addition to a GBP 150,000 grant from LSE, the ventures in the accelerator benefitted from bespoke support and mentoring during a 12-week program culminating in Summit Day in London, where ventures had the opportunity to showcase their impact to philanthropists, impact investors and the broader ecosystem. 100x Impact Accelerator announced their second cohort in December 2023. 100x Impact Accelerator has scope to support up to 20 social enterprises every year, aiming for 70% of these to come from emerging markets.

The SDG funding gap is about USD 4 trillion a year. Closing this gap will require more private capital for development. SIFI was launched in 2022 and uses public and philanthropic funds to help drive this shift.

SIFI supports the design and development of innovative financial solutions supporting the SDGs, by providing catalytic capital in order to attract mainstream investors while strengthening the ecosystem, contributing to improved framework conditions and impact management practices. SIFI’s goal is to secure USD 100 million in funding with the aim of enabling USD 1 billion in impact invest ments. To date, SIFI secured funding of CHF 34.5 million from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Government of Luxembourg, the UBS Optimus Foundation and the Credit Suisse Foundation. In 2023, SIFI supported the design of 14 new blende d finance initiatives, hired its first CEO and managed to expand its funders beyond Switzerland.

Thanks to your continued commitment to Ukraine, we’ve mobilized USD 58.4 million for the Ukraine Relief Fund as of the end of 2023. We’ve committed USD 42 million to help our 24 partners provide relief, recovery and resilience services.

In the third year of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the humanitarian crisis persists, demanding a strategic and adaptive response. The UN reports that over 14.6 million people – about 40 percent of the Ukrainian population – still need humanitarian assistance. Families and children face increasingly complex challenges as they grapple with displacement, economic instability and disrupted access to essential services. The evolving dynamics of the conflict demand a nuanced approach that goes beyond immediate relief efforts to address the deeper, long-term impact on the well-being and prospects of affected communities.

Recent developments have underscored the importance of building local capacity and resilience. The protracted nature of the crisis has not only strained healthcare and education systems – it’s also heightened the need for sustainable solutions that empower communities to navigate the challenges independently. Economic uncertainty and security concerns add an urgency to this need.

The UBS Optimus Foundation continues to strengthen its focus on building local capacity and resilience. In collaboration with trusted partners, we’re shifting from emergency relief efforts to initiatives that empower communities to respond dynamically to local challenges. This strategic shift is grounded in the belief that by fostering local resilience, we can contribute to sustainable positive change in the lives of those affected by the conflict. UBS Optimus Foundation is focused on supporting grassroots organizations directly or through intermediaries where possible, 170 and counting, to ensure as much funding as possible is reaching local Ukrainian organizations that have been working in their communities for some time and will continue to do so.

The two large earthquakes that hit Türkiye, Syria and the surrounding region on 6 February 2023 had a devastating impact. The earthquake left a trail of destruction for millions of people in Türkiye and Syria, killing more than 55,000. Thanks to your support, AÇEV in Türkiye and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Syria are helping to alleviate the negative impacts from the natural disaster.

AÇEV has been working in Türkiye in the fields of early childhood, parenting and women’s empowerment for three decades. AÇEV’s emergency response work supports children’s education, equips parents with the skills to support children’s psycho-social well-being and empowers young women. Three centers have been constructed in the earthquake zone during the project as a temporary learning space. During this period, nearly 5,000 children and over 1,000 adults directly benefited from AÇEV’s program.

Since 2012, the IRC has been actively involved in responding to the humanitarian crisis in Syria, implementing various programs to assist communities affected by conflict in both the northern and southern regions. The IRC was one of the first agencies to start providing cash support to people, reaching tens of thousands in the first weeks. Continued support helped IRC scale up operations and reach a larger number of individuals, delivering a multipurpose cash assistance program to meet the urgent needs of more affected children and their families.