Plus: Tradeswomen platform TaskHer gets funding from impact investors | Fashion for Good’s initiative to boost US textile recycling
Findings from the latest research by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) demonstrates the resilience to COVID-19 of financial inclusion investments, across asset classes in both developed and emerging markets.
The study, part of the GIINsight briefings, is based on impact data and reveals that despite a decrease in active clients and decent jobs, investors focused on strengthening stakeholder engagement and ensuring increasingly responsible investments. The report also looked at the impact of COVID-19 on gender equality and stakeholder satisfaction during the pandemic.
The brief includes insights into how impact investors can respond to current and future crises by drawing on the effects COVID-19 had on the impact performance of financial inclusion investments.
Read the GIINsight: Financial inclusion investments show resilience to COVID-19 report.
Impact investors back tradeswomen online platform TaskHer
Bethnal Green Ventures, Resolution Foundation and Ufi Ventures have provided £200,000 in pre-seed funding to TaskHer, an online booking platform helping homeowners to book professional tradeswomen.
Only 3% of people working as electricians, plumbers or eating engineers are female. Launched last year, TaskHer helps people book and pay for tradeswomen online.
With more than 30% of customers so far making a repeat booking through the platform, and tradeswomen receiving market-leading rates of pay, the number of users joining the platform is on the rise, the company said.
Co-founder, Anna Moynihan explained: “The chronic skills shortage across all skilled trades presents a huge economic opportunity that is currently being missed due to a lack of visibility and outdated gender norms. We are delighted that Bethnal Green Ventures, Resolution Foundation and Ufi Ventures have invested in TaskHer to fuel the work we’re doing to tackle these social challenges”.
New initiative to boost US textile recycling
Fashion for Good, the global innovation platform for the fashion industry, has launched a new initiative, which it says will provide the most representative view of textile waste composition in the United States to date in order to accelerate textile recycling.
The Sorting for Circularity project, which was first launched in Europe and later India, will take place over 18-months and include an extensive consumer survey to map the journey a garment takes from closet to end of use, as well as conduct comprehensive analysis of post-consumer textiles using innovative, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) technology to understand their composition.
The hope is that the data generated will inform decisions that will drive the investment and actions needed to scale collection, sorting and recycling innovations.
