Impact Snapshot
October 2022
In this month’s Impact Snapshot, read about EHF Fellows in action creating environmental, social and economic impact, plus recent recognitions and awards they’ve received.
Fellows in action 🎬
🌏 Environment
Mike Taitoko was on a panel to discuss regenerative solutions empowering our farmers to adopt new ways of sustainable agriculture production at Oceania Summit 2035.
Mike is the Co-founder of Toha and Calm The Farm. Toha is an impact investment platform to fund projects that lead to improved environmental, climate and economic outcomes. Calm The Farm is a Toha venture helping to scale up Aotearoa’s regenerative agriculture and regenerative organics footprint.
Photo credit: Michelle Cole
Hillary Laureate, Aimée Christensen was also the opening keynote speaker at the 2035 Oceania Summit, and discussed New Zealand’s emissions challenges, and our closing window to address these. She as also interviewed on Q+A TVNZ 1 by Jack Tame.
Laina Green hosted an American Sustainable Business Network Live: Beyond Impact Investing and Environmental, Social and Governance session. The panel discussed what intentional finance for systems change based on restorative economics looks like, examined some examples of restorative investing and touched on the policy changes needed to make this approach successful.
Laina is the CEO of Angels of Impact, which supports and funds women and indigenous-led social businesses in the Asia Pacific region.
Mark Sorensen spoke with Jesse Mulligan from RNZ about how Cleanery is helping address the problem of excess cleaning spray bottles through their alternative product - a powder that can be combined with tap water in reusable bottles.
✌ Social
Kaye-Maree Dunn and her company, Make Everything Achievable (MEA), partnered with Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi and NZTech to initiate a research project building an initial map of the Māori Tech Sector. This research project explores what the tech sector looks like from a Māori lens, based on interviews with those working across different tech roles, key influencers and educators supporting Māori into tech training or tech jobs. This work is supported by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE)
The work that Francesca Pick, and many other Fellows, put into Cobudget is paying off. The Cobudget project has now transitioned into a new phase, following a kind of “merger” of two community developed tools into a new platform, team, website and co-op. Cobudget is an open source tool and a practice that enables all members of an organisation or group to get involved in decision-making by proposing projects and allocating funds to the proposals they like.
Galia Barhava-Monteith will be on the ASB Bank “Women who LEAD” panel to provide a rare insight into her professional life. Galia is an expert in mentoring and organisational culture, and has become one of New Zealand’s leading organisational culture specialists. She has worked as a personal advisor to senior leaders and board directors at some of NZ’s largest corporates.
Jase Te Patu, founder of M3, was interviewed by TVNZ 1’s Seven Sharp, to highlight his work helping Wellington kids deal with stress by utilising the power of Māori pūrākau and whakataukī to share mindfulness and movement. Jase is about to start touring his Yoga for Kids course around the country to help more children.
Stuff featured Peter and Emily Maher and their tiny house building and living experience during their 3 years in New Zealand. They’ve enjoyed “going tiny,” but with a baby girl due December, they have decided to sell their ‘little haven.’
Peter is about to launch his project, inWonder, to encourage visitors to support local SMEs, who have been deeply impacted over the past few years. As well as activate a new way for local operators to harness the power of visitor insight to improve business decisions. It’s been described as the “Spotify for experiences.”
Francesca Pick will be talking on RnDAO Talks early November, continuing the knowledge exchange sessions between the world of self-management and Web3. Francesca’s work is dedicated to creating and organising structures and cultures that contribute to a more healthy system for all. She’ll share common myths and misconceptions about what leadership is and is not in the context of self-management and decentralised governance.
📈 Economic
The Spacebase Team (Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom, Eric Dahlstrom, Rich Bodo, and Usman Iftikhar) presented their white paper at the International Astronautical Conference, which summarises their 5 years of work and how they’ve helped catalyse a space industry in NZ. They present their initial results from workshops with participants from more than 40 countries that helped them identify action they can take to grow their local entrepreneurial space industries.
Steven Moe’s opinion was included in the recent ADLS’s Law News edition, on the topic of the Director’s ESG bill. Steven supports some aspects of the bill and the excerpt is below.
In an opinion piece published by Stuff [on 29 Sep 21], Moe said before weighing in on how the bill was going too far, critics should consider that it’s in line with developments overseas. He cites the UK example, where since 2006 the requisite legislation includes a list of considerations for directors to have regard to such as the employees, customers, suppliers, the community and the environment. The UK’s proposed Better Business Act that aims to make the balancing of “people, profit and planet” a core issue for directors would make the requirements more rigorous. “There may be tweaks to the New Zealand proposal which could incorporate some of these ideas and jump over a generation of thinking to where the debate eventually leads,” Moe says.”
(pages 4-5)🤝🏽 Collective Impact
Gary Hirshberg is running his 6th annual Hirshberg Entrepreneurship Institute in Aotearoa in mid-November. This is a high-impact two-day bootcamp conceived by Gary in 1998, based on his experience leading Stonyfield Farm from its start as a 7-cow operation in 1983 to its current nearly $400MM annual sales level. Lisa King (Founder, Eat My Lunch & AF Drinks) will be speaking at the event.
Francesca Pick and Alanna Irving are speaking at the upcoming Doing Better Work Together (DBWT) global online gathering at the end of November. It is being produced by Ants Cabraal and also features the work of many friends of EHF from the Enspiral community.
Awards and recognitions 🏆
Tracy Chou and Block Party for raising a $4.8 million seed. Block Party helps people curate a safer experience on Twitter and with this raise, plan to expand to other social platforms.
Justin Kan and Rye for raising $14 million led by the crypto arm of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Rye is a new e-commerce API that lets merchants, stores and customers transact openly and with minimal fees.
Corinne Van Egeraat and Petr Lom for their award-winning 2022 documentary film “Myanmar Diaries” being one of three submissions made by the Netherlands to the Academy Awards to compete for next year’s Oscars (Best Documentary Film category).
Kim Aitken and Truss House for commencing their first build in Aotearoa, in Waihi Beach, which is scheduled to start on 14th November and includes tours of their training pod.
*Images have been provided by Fellows or sourced from the Internet. EHF does not claim to own the images.