elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalization

19/02/2026

Sankalp is just around the corner, and we’re excited that our colleagues Khaya, Ija, and Sophia will be in Nairobi this week!

At elea, we are eager to connect with early-stage entrepreneurs who are fighting absolute poverty with strong product-market fit. Similarly, we appreciate discussing innovative solutions across the continent with like-minded investors, which is why we are excited about being there.

If you’re in Nairobi, let’s meet! We’d love to exchange ideas and explore ways to collaborate

18/02/2026

🎉 We are thrilled to welcome Springboard to our portfolio!

As a Swiss-founded organization, chocolate is close to our hearts. In recent years, the global cocoa supply chain has come under increasing pressure. Farmers face volatile prices, the growing impacts of climate change, and limited access to quality inputs, all of which make sustainable livelihoods increasingly difficult.

Springboard addresses these challenges through an innovative cooperative model that organizes Nigerian cocoa farmers and connects them to markets. Regenerative and organic farming practices are central to their approach. By establishing agroforestry systems, Springboard supports the rejuvenation of aging cocoa trees while promoting intercropping, which strengthens soil health, reduces dependency on a single crop, and prevents deforestation by increasing productivity on existing farmland. Farmers are empowered to become more entrepreneurial and strategically invest in their farms, which has resulted eventually by tripling their incomes.

🍫 Beyond trading cocoa with chocolate companies and buyers, Springboard creates additional value through processing. In its factory, the team produces chocolate as well as other products such as plantain chips and protein bread, contributing to local food security and creating further economic opportunities.

By positioning itself as a springboard for young people entering agriculture and by providing strong, hands-on training, the organization is redefining farming as a viable and aspirational career path. This approach goes beyond improving individual livelihoods but has positive effects on the ecosystem and long-term food security.

🤝 We are excited to welcome the founders, Lawrence and Helen, to our entrepreneurs’ community and look forward to supporting Springboard on its growth journey.

04/02/2026

🎉 This week, Digital Divide Data (DDD), one of the ventures in the elea network, celebrated its 25th anniversary in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. From a pioneering idea to bridge the digital divide to a globally recognized enterprise, DDD has empowered underprivileged youth through digital skills training and meaningful employment. Today, it provides end-to-end machine learning data operations and training data solutions for Large Language Models and computer vision systems to leading multinational clients.

Founded by Jeremy Hockenstein, Jaeson Rosenfeld, and Michael Chertok, DDD trained and employed more than 15’000 young people across Cambodia, Kenya, and Laos, transforming potential into opportunity and opportunity into leadership. It was deeply touching to see how everyone in the company cares about developing junior colleagues and creating opportunities for them. At the anniversary celebration, alumni shared how DDD changed the course of their lives, enabling them to build future-oriented careers in their home countries. Carrying values of discipline, accountability, and social impact into their private and public sector careers.

🌟 At elea, we are deeply proud of DDD’s journey and long-term impact. It is both a transformational success story and a model of catalytic impact investing, having changed lives and reached a stage where elea could exit and recycle capital into new early-stage ventures.

Congratulations to the entire DDD team and community!🥳

03/02/2026

🌱 “During our mentorship sessions, Amanda supports me in defining my core values and strengths. Our conversations allow me to deepen my self-understanding and identify where I am in flow, the point where what I enjoy most aligns with what I do best, so I can thrive at elea and beyond,” states Chloé.

Mentorship is a key pillar of the elea Talent Program that strengthens the personal and professional growth of our ambitious early-career team members as they begin their path in impact investing. As a mentor, Amanda, who joined our team seven years ago, provides structure and guidance by helping to prioritize tasks, offering constructive feedback, and supporting career development while serving as a steady coach throughout the journey. Regular check-ins, bi-annual skill reviews, yearly reflections on career plans, and lunch walks all form part of our structured mentoring experience.

🌟“I believe that everyone has a talent to offer the world. As a mentor to our associates, I help them discover what their talents are and how they want to use them. It is also rewarding for me personally because I am always challenged to grow and learn through our exchanges,” comments Amanda.

We believe that when people grow, impact grows. By nurturing talent, building self-awareness, and helping our team find their flow, mentorship becomes one of the most powerful ways we advance meaningful impact for our team, for our impact ventures, and for the people and communities they serve. 🤝

30/01/2026

🎉 We are delighted to share fantastic news from Johannesburg: Parl has officially graduated and is now a certified plumber, following her apprenticeship with BluLever Education and her employer Detcon Projects.

“I have grown skills that will not only sustain me for now, but for a lifetime,” shares Parl, who grew up in a community where access to water and sanitation were a daily challenge. Watching her uncle carry out repair work sparked an early fascination for craftsmanship, one that later shaped her career path.

Reflecting on her purpose, she says: “I love helping people, and plumbing for me is just that.” During her apprenticeship, Parl not only honed her technical skills but also had the opportunity to train a colleague at her workplace, an early sign of her growing confidence and emerging leadership.

Skilled artisans like Parl are in high demand, yet too often these roles remain hard to fill due to underinvestment in vocational training and persistent biases favoring academic pathways.

elea portfolio venture BluLever Education is changing that narrative. Through an innovative model that combines skills training, access to financing, and pathways into formal employment, BluLever is redefining blue-collar careers for South African youth with the ambition to scale across Africa.

Revisit Parl’s journey:
📝 Blog: https://www.elea.org/en/blog/post/building-south-africas-future
🎬 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nx_AjVF4b0

We wish Parl – and all fellow graduates – every success in the next chapter of their careers. 🌟

26/01/2026

🥳 2026 marks an exciting milestone as we celebrate 20 years of impact through entrepreneurship together with our ever-growing community, for which we are deeply grateful.

To kick the year off, we asked a few colleagues what they are most looking forward to. Their reflections offer a glimpse into the moments, milestones, and motivations shaping what lies ahead.

🤝 Thank you: Ester Bortot, Melody Chua, Nicola Roten, Andreas Kirchschläger, María José Sámano, Elena Torresani, Sophia Gampp, A***n Schül

Stay tuned for more highlights throughout the coming months. 💫

22/01/2026

“If it were an easy problem, commercial ventures and commercial investors would have solved it already. But we are working on the really big challenges.”

This powerful statement from Ben Jeffreys, Founder & CEO of ATEC Global, captured the essence of our session moderated by Adrian Ackeret at the TPC (Tsao Pao Chee) House in Davos. Ben shared how ATEC is transforming the decarbonization of cooking into income opportunities for people living in poverty – proving that climate solutions can also be livelihood solutions.

Samuel Knauss, Founder & CEO of Elucid, built on this insight by highlighting that 90% of smallholder farmers lack access to healthcare. Elucid is addressing this gap by embedding healthcare access directly into agricultural value chains – strengthening farmer wellbeing and livelihoods while improving supply chain resilience.

Together, these examples illustrate why we need visionary entrepreneurs who see opportunity where others see problems – and who design business models where impact is sustainable.

But this work only becomes possible through investors who embrace entrepreneurial philanthropy: those willing to provide patient and catalytic capital to back high-impact returns even when they take longer and require deeper commitment. As Valerie Remoquillo-Jenni, CEO of Stiftung Fourfold, noted, this is where philanthropic capital truly has leverage.

👏 We applaud Chavalit Frederick Tsao, Dr. Mary Ann Tsao and their family, TPC, and the NR17 Foundation for creating such a bold presence in Davos, for building a platform that enables meaningful conversation and collaboration, and for inviting elea as a partner to this effort. Real change does not come from noise, but from people and institutions that believe in dialogue, live partnership values, and work to shape systems that transform livelihoods over the long term.

✨ As we enter elea’s 20th anniversary year, we look forward to continuing conversations like these, not least by strengthening the East-Meets-West bridge through our philanthropic investing collective, soon to be launched in partnership with Asia Philanthropy Circle and Asia Community Foundation in Singapore.

22/12/2025

🎄 elea Christmas Message 🎄

This year was one of the most successful in the nearly 20-year history of elea, and all our core areas contributed significantly to this achievement. Over the past three years, both our investment activity and our capacity to inspire philanthropic investors to engage with elea have almost doubled.

We achieved this success despite an ever more challenging environment: and are two key terms reflected in our name, and both are facing headwinds today. At the same time, is more important than ever to maintain competitiveness, preserve prosperity, and fight poverty. It depends on open borders and vibrant international exchanges and can only succeed in the long term if it is grounded in responsibility and ethical values.

Through our work, we are convinced that ethically sound entrepreneurial solutions are one of the most effective responses to the challenges of our time and that they can be particularly effective in fighting absolute poverty.

The photos highlight:
🍲An Indigenous community member in Mexico hosts tourists and cooks for them at her home. elea venture Rutopía connects international travelers with rural, often Indigenous communities, supporting them through capacity building and the co-creation of unique tourism experiences.

🥑A farmer in Tanzania waters avocado plants. elea venture Guavay provides crop-specific organic fertilizers and soil-enhancing products, while training farmers in their effective use. With better access and know-how, smallholder farmers boost yields, restore soil health, and improve their incomes.

The entire elea team wishes you a merry Christmas time. 🤶

15/12/2025

“What motivates me are entrepreneurial stories. I was recently in Indonesia, where we have invested in a home-chef business. One home chef I met started cooking in her garage five years ago and now delivers up to 800 meals a day with a team of eleven helpers. 🍲 Stories like this motivate me,” says Peter Wuffli, speaking with AWP Finanznachrichten AG.

In an interview with Leah Süss, Peter elaborates on his motivation for founding elea and our approach to fighting absolute poverty with entrepreneurial means by supporting impact ventures such as bukaPO and its founders, Olaf Purvis and Darren Purvis. The conversation also touches on the role of development aid and the impact of US policy on investments in the impact sector.

🤝 Many thanks to Leah for the thoughtful conversation
https://www.awp.ch/sharedarticles?articleid=-1982106382 (in German)

And for the in-depth feature published, among others, by HANDELSZEITUNG:
https://www.handelszeitung.ch/newsticker/statt-spenden-stiftungen-und-ngos-entdecken-impact-investing-890658-1 (in German)

13/11/2025

What an inspiring week in Nairobi! 🌍✨

Lisa Jean-Mairet and Khaya Makhubu had a fantastic time at the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance (AVPA) Conference, which brought together an incredible mix of impact-oriented investors, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem builders from across Africa. The energy, ideas, and spirit of collaboration made it an unforgettable few days.

Lisa was honored to be part of the Building Bridges delegation – an insightful and well-curated group, each bringing deep expertise and unique perspectives. These kinds of platforms are exactly what our sector needs to build bridges, spark new partnerships, and unlock more capital for impact.

One highlight was the panel on “Unlocking Local Resilience Through Catalytic and Impact-Driven Capital,” where Lisa joined Seth Mulli and Judith Ngonyo for a rich discussion. It was inspiring to exchange views on how organizations like Grounded, Allan & Gill Gray Philanthropies, and elea approach impact capital.

Their key takeaways:
💡 We need a shared language around innovative finance and catalytic capital – so we can better align intent, expectations, and impact.
💡 Unlocking home-grown capital is essential to future-proofing Africa, driving sustainable growth and scaling solutions that are rooted in African realities.
💡 Not all capital is created equal. Entrepreneurs should be thoughtful about how to select their investors.

A huge thank you to the AVPA team for pulling off such a thoughtful and energizing event. We’re already looking forward to reconnecting and continuing the conversations in Mombasa 2026! 🌊

05/11/2025

✨ A glimpse behind the scenes of our annual elea Philanthropic Investors’ Circle Dinner — moments of connection, inspiration, and purpose. Thank you to everyone who walks this journey with us! 🌍🙏

30/10/2025

"Our goal is to make a difference while building a sustainable, profitable business,” shares Khadija Mohamed-Churchill, founder and CEO of impact venture Kwanza Tukule Foods Limited, in a recent interview with Takashi Sugimoto from The Philanthropist.

What began as a simple bean delivery service has grown into Kwanza Tukule, an innovative social enterprise that supplies essential food products to street kitchens and small shops in Nairobi’s poorest neighborhoods. Before launching the venture, Khadija gained valuable experience abroad, working at a bank in London and completing an MBA at Imperial College. Returning to Kenya, she was driven to create lasting impact where it mattered most to her.

Through resilience, adaptability, and with the continuous support of the elea team, Khadija transformed her idea into a source of stability for local communities by ensuring reliable access to daily meals.

Read the full interview to discover how Kwanza Tukule is reshaping food access in Kenya:

In Nairobi’s poorest sett­le­ments, small street kitchens play a vital role in food supply. In 2019, Khadija Moha­med-Chur­chill laun­ched the pilot for her impact venture Kwanza Tukule, which supplies these kitchens with food products. Her supply chain enables afforda­ble and relia­ble acc...