Resilience to face the future’s challenges

4.6m 

people reached (of which 2.7m children)

329

programs managed

161.45

million USD raised

61

countries in which grants were deployed

120 000

professionals reached

108

million USD in grants approved*

12

offices globally

90 

philanthropy experts globally

20

years of experience

The Accelerate collective harnesses the tools of social finance to deliver greater health and education outcomes for vulnerable communities in West Africa and South East Asia. Along with fellow philanthropists, best-in-class non-profit organizations and experts, members drive collective impact by using innovative financing models to unlock new and much needed sources of funding to improve health and education outcomes for disadvantaged children.

We’re the first generation to experience the impact of climate change, and the last with an opportunity to do something about it. The Climate Collective supports communities in South East Asia and beyond in developing climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, contributing to emissions reductions and improving biodiversity.

The best place for children to grow up is in a family; all research points to this. Rather than maintaining a broken institutional system, the Transform Collective drives efforts towards systemic change, to keep children in families. It aims to support family-based care as an alternative to institutional care (orphanages etc.) and reform policy and practices to protect vulnerable children and strengthen families.

In Sao Paulo state, Brazil, Preta Terra launched their innovative Atlantic Agroforestry program, working with 35 smallholder farmer families to help the transition to climate smart regenerative agroforestry. The team produced tailored development plans for each farm- using GIS data and drone imagery they established a baseline and identified the most effective land use strategies across 90 hectares of previously degraded farmland. Planting began in the rains of 2021 when thousands of tree seedlings were bought and distributed, and each farm started its transformation to an ecologically positive agroforestry system providing economic benefits alongside carbon storage to mitigate the climate crisis.

This is an innovative app delivering up to date satellite imagery to pastoralists living in remote rangelands across East Africa. Through 2021 with UBS Optimus support Afriscout mapped 9 new regions in Ethiopia, bringing 50,210km2 of grazing grounds online and covering a population of 554,740. With a total of 6,825 new downloads in 2021, bringing the total to 21,920, the app brought essential information to an estimated 47,775 new pastoralist households, helping them find good quality grazing for their livestock. Well managed grazing provides not only food security and income support for these communities but also enhances climate mitigation through improved rangeland management which allows degraded land to regenerate, supporting biomass regrowth and resulting carbon sequestration.

Following the creation of the Ascension Island Marine Protected Area (MPA), in 2021 UBS Optimus was able to support Blue Marine Foundation in purchase of an environmental DNA sequencer, a tool for managing and monitoring the MPA. eDNA is emerging as the preeminent tool for the early detection of invasive non-native species, identified as one of the main threats to the Ascension MPA and shallow-water ecosystems more widely. The technique uses the free DNA molecules in the water to detect the presence of a species long before they become obvious in visual surveys. Finding invasive species as soon as they arrive is vital to successful eradication, as there is usually only a narrow window before they become established. Knowing what species are present in the MPA is also important for monitoring how well the area is being managed to protect biodiversity.

Implemented by The Nature Conservancy, this has provided tailored incubation, technical assistance, grant funding and operational support to projects and enterprises across Africa. It includes project design for the Kafue-Zambezi REDD+ project in Zambia, which now has a target of 2.5 million hectares generating carbon credits for local communities by 2025. The team completed prefeasibility assessments for three new partnerships, identifying potential for a further 10 million hectares of protected forests and mangroves across Angola, Zambia, and Mozambique.

IUCN's Blue Natural Capital Financing Facility has identified and funded seven best practice sustainable coastal enterprises and with the support of UBS Optimus Investing in Knowledge program has produced blueprints to enable replication and scaling of these successful business models, which allow for community development alongside coastal conservation and restoration. The knowledge and innovation from these ground-breaking businesses has formed the basis for a successful podcast series 'Investing For Ocean Impact' which had had around 1500 listens and led to over 1214 downloads of the blueprints.

In partnership with Canopy Planet, this is a supply chain intervention to protect forests through large-scale, high-profile advocacy and product certification campaign. Canopy continued to build Pack4Good's momentum with brands and producers in key sectors and regions around the world with 160 new brands developing Pack4Good policies, including the world's largest luxury goods conglomerate, LVMH, and other major global packaging consumers in the fashion/retail, beauty and personal care, beverage, and e-commerce sectors. All Pack 4 Good brand partners have identified, or are in the process of identifying, their packaging supply chain and starting to engage key producers. Specifically, four brands have engaged one of their suppliers on their forest sourcing after Canopy learned that this supplier was sourcing from A&E Forests.

We refined our health portfolio strategy to focus on using flexible grant and investment capital to help scale quality primary healthcare that improves the health of the world’s most vulnerable children. An external evaluation of the health portfolio found evidence of impact in terms of availability and quality of care and scaling progress. It also recommended a narrowed focus and more emphasis on social finance going forward, which is UBS-OF’s comparative advantage.

Several frontline health partners demonstrated strong scaling progress—Healthy Learners and Integrate Health expanded operations to new areas of Zambia and Togo respectively, and Muso launched operations in a new country, Cote D’Ivoire. Integrate Health also supported the government of Togo to design a package of free maternal and new-born healthcare modelled on Integrate Health’s approach.

The Ghanaian government announced that the National Health Insurance Scheme would provide coverage for diagnosis and treatment of the top four pediatric cancers in Ghana, a milestone for which UBS-OF partner World Child Cancer and others have advocated for years.

CHAI signed a further cancer access partnership agreement, bringing the total number of pediatric access agreements to four. To date 16 access products have been procured through the agreements, and 27 pediatric oncology drugs are included.

The Jhpiego Ethiopia program demonstrated strong progress against key project metrics, including doubling the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist completeness and appropriate use of prophylactic antibiotics before/during surgical procedures from baseline, and reducing the surgical site infection rate from 7% to 5%. In 2021, 2021, Jhpiego also substantially supported the design, write up and publication of the national surgical and anesthesia care (SaLTS I) program evaluation report, that helped shape Ethiopia’s new national surgical care strategic plan (2021-25).

UBS published this report in late 2021, this comprehensive guide to effective health philanthropy brings together the expertise of our global UBS Optimus Foundation team, global health experts, UBS-OF partners, philanthropists, and change-makers.

Find out how you can make a difference. Download your guide