On July 13, the Permanent Mission of Armenia and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) held a panel discussion at the United Nations headquarters, on the margins of the annual session of the High-Level Political Forum for Sustainable Development.

Titled “Impact Investment and Innovation for Sustainable Development Goals”, the event focused on solutions for leveraging impact investment and social enterprise in support of the UN development goals.

The discussions opened with the welcoming remarks delivered by the Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Armenia to the UN Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and the Assistant Secretary General and Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS Cihan Sultanoğlu, followed by the discussion on the outcomes of the first global summit on impact investment for development held in Yerevan presented by the UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Armenia Bradley Busetto.

Focusing on effective partnerships and collaboration models, the Advisor to the Prime Minister of Armenia Aleksandr Khachaturyan presented the work of the Center for Strategic Initiatives - a public-private partnership established by the Government of Armenia to accelerate investment-oriented reforms agenda.

The UN panel featured prominent Armenian impact ventures and organisations represented by Garo Armen (Children of Armenia Fund), Souren Aloyan (Dasaran Educational Programme), Marie Lou Papazian (Tumo Center for Creative Technologies), as well as impact investment leaders Kevin Jones (SOCAP), Banny Banerjee (Stanford ChangeLabs), Mika Pyykkö (Sitra Fund) and Hans Wahl (INSEAD).

Using Armenia as a case in point, the panel discussed the role of innovation and impact ventures in the context of the global agenda for sustainable development, as important vehicles for change due to their transformative power of co-creating development solutions.