Months into US President Donald Trump’s second term in office, the global philanthropy sector is undergoing “a time of great uncertainty”, says Naina Batra, CEO of AVPN, the largest network of social investors in Asia with over 600 diverse members across 33 markets.
“Questions around global leadership [and] around what is happening to address the challenges that we all face as a global population are more pressing today than ever before,” says Batra at the AVPN Southeast Asia Summit 2025 on Feb 25.
The Trump administration announced just yesterday (Feb 24) that it will cut 1,600 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) jobs in the US. This, along with the US’s exit from the Paris Agreement on climate change, has “accelerated a shift” from a “single powerful economic leader” towards a “more multipolar global order”, adds Batra. “Many of us did not think [this] would come so fast.”
Speaking to a room of some 450 investors, philanthropists, government officials and impact leaders, Batra says today’s geopolitical environment “is a cause for concern”. “It is something that all of us need to take pause and think as to how it’s affecting not just our own activities, but those of our partners, our collaborators [and] organisations that we tend to engage and interact with.”
AVPN is a network of “funders”, says Batra, and some are feeling pressured to “step up” and close the gaps left by the US’s withdrawal from global programmes. “If we are stepping up to fill this breach, what is happening to those projects that we had decided we wanted to fund? Who’s going to fund those? These are not comfortable questions.”
Southeast Asia’s voice
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Asia is deciding how it can “step up and take its place” in a changing global order, says Batra in her opening address on the second day of the two-day conference.
Southeast Asia, in particular, tends to be overshadowed by South Asia and East Asia, she adds. “When we attend global events across the world, whether they be COP, whether they be the United Nations General Assembly, whether they be Davos, whether they be all of these large convening events, oftentimes our voices are not there on the stage, especially the voices from Southeast Asia.”
Batra says the region should play a leadership role in tackling challenges like healthcare access, income inequality, blended financing and adaptation financing, to name a few.
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“[This conference] highlights how important it is that Southeast Asia plays a leadership role in tackling these challenges and leveraging your potential. The solutions that we develop here and throughout the year will not only shape this region’s trajectory, but also hopefully contribute to the broader global agenda,” she adds.
At the conference, CapitaLand Hope Foundation (CHF), the philanthropic arm of CapitaLand Group, launched its inaugural $3 million CapitaLand Community Resilience Initiative. The initiative sources for “social resilience projects” and aims to provide vulnerable children and youth with “skills, knowledge and support systems”, says CHF.
CHF has launched a regional grant call and is partnering with AVPN to identify “impactful organisations” to receive a portion of the grant. Non-profit organisations across China, India, Singapore and Vietnam with sustainable projects focused on improving the education, skills or health and well-being of children and youths can submit their applications from now till April 25.
Separately, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Access Health International, SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute and AVPN have pledged to ensure sustained and equitable access to medicines in Southeast Asia among underserved communities.
The Southeast Asia Access to Medicines Pledge underpins a shared vision of improving medicine access in the region. Each organisation aims to share knowledge and best practices, invest resources, work together to drive progress and continuously measure and report impact.
Finally, AVPN and Impact Intelligence have launched the Social investment in Asia in Action (SIAA) Dashboard, an AI-powered tool that provides a dynamic view of social investment capital flows across Asia-Pacific.
Covering more than 50 markets across the Asia Pacific, the dashboard generates news and insights on social investments across Asia, and identifies specific impact activities across sectors, geographies, capital investment mechanisms and more.
In her remarks, Batra calls for the philanthropy sector to “step up to the challenge that the globe has presented us today”. “Too often, what happens when something like this happens [is that] we freeze in the headlights. We sit down and we think, ‘Okay, I should stop everything till I figure out what’s going on in the world.’ That is really not the answer. The answer is to act faster, quicker and take more people along with you. Stopping is not an option.”
Read more about impact investing and philanthropy:
- Social finance funding in Asia to rise over 10% this year: Citi (February)
- Making money becomes easier with gender lens in mind: DBS chief economist (December 2024)
- Arta Finance partners Temasek Trust’s Co-Axis to offer exclusive access to eight impact projects (October 2024)
- Costly data-gathering, impatient capital and few blended finance transactions limit impact investing in Asia: panel (September 2024)
- Charity vs philanthropy: A clash of ideas at AVPN’s Abu Dhabi conference (May 2024)
- AVPN launches social investing system in Abu Dhabi with MAS support (April 2024)
- Investing for impact? Learn these lessons from ESG investing (April 2024)
- ‘Strong storytelling, clear visual aids’ help ABC Impact explain impact of investments (April 2024)
- T Rowe Price’s Global Impact Equity Fund seeks returns and measurable impact (April 2024)
- Don’t conflate investing in activity with actual impact: UBS philanthropy head (April 2024)
- Temasek Trust, DBS Foundation, UBS Optimus Foundation launch new digital impact marketplace (April 2024)
