Solidaridad is pleased to share that the new crowdfunding platform PlusPlus, a joint initiative by Solidaridad and partners Lendahand, ICCO Cooperation and Truvalu, was selected for the P4G Scale-Up Partnerships grant of one million USD. The PlusPlus crowdfunding platform aims to ensure and further foster food security, entrepreneurship and employment in Africa, Asia and Latin America. P4G was officially handed over the grant to representatives from Solidaridad and Lendahand on 23 September in New York.
P4G GRANT FOR ADVANCING GREEN ECONOMIC GROWTH
The PlusPlus Partnership grant is part of the 2019 global competition of Scale-Up Partnerships led by P4G. P4G – Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030 – is a global network aiming to drive green economic growth through scaling up innovative public-private partnerships, and has thus selected seven public-private partnerships in the 2019 global competition. All seven partnerships are working collaboratively to advance innovative sustainable solutions to address persistent global challenges.
With 2019 P4G funding, this partnership aims to:
- Raise $14 million from thousands of private investors to fund 30 businesses that could ultimately benefit as many as 30,000 small farmers;
- Boost the expansion of many scalable agri-food businesses that would ultimately contribute to sustainable economic development and the fight against hunger and poverty.
The grant will be officially handed over by P4G to Solidaridad’s Heske Verburg, Tim Diphoorn and Lars van Doremalen, and Judith Mathijssen from Lendahand on 23 September in New York.
THE PLUSPLUS CROWDFUNDING PLATFORM
In cooperation with Lendahand, ICCO Cooperation and Truvalu, Solidaridad will soon launch the innovative crowdfunding platform PlusPlus. With this crowdfunding platform, we aim to increase the financial investments made in small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises (SMEs) in countries such as Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico and Zambia.
Small and medium-sized businesses in the agricultural sector are often considered too large for micro-credit but too small for mainstream banks. This regularly leaves them stranded in the middle. PlusPlus aims to provide a solution for this so-called ‘missing middle’ by driving financial investments from thousands of individual investors who want to contribute to a more sustainable, inclusive agricultural development, better wages and improved livelihoods of the producers.
In this way, PlusPlus forms a sustainable solution to the persistent challenge of access to finance. And the best piece of news is: once the loan is paid back, the investor can re-invest again in another agricultural SME.
