In July 2025, NESsT formally established its legal presence in Colombia with the opening of a new office. While we've accelerated diverse impact-driven enterprises based in Colombia for 5 years, this milestone enables us to deepen our local involvement in the region.
NESsT announces today that Grzegorz Wach has been named NESsT Country Director of Poland, reflecting the impact investor’s expanding acceleration of social enterprises that create dignified jobs for individuals from excluded communities, including refugees, migrants, women, at-risk youth, the LGBTQIA+ community, and others facing systemic barriers to economic opportunity.
NESsT announces today that Ioana Samoil has been named NESsT Country Director of Romania, highlighting the impact investor's deepening focus on accelerating Romanian social enterprises that create dignified jobs for individuals from excluded communities, including refugees, migrants, women, at-risk youth, the LGBTQIA+ community, and others facing systemic barriers to economic opportunity.
In May 2025, we were delighted to host an in-person meeting in Olsztyn, Poland, bringing together NESsT portfolio enterprises, partners from IKEA Social Entrepreneurship, and members of the NESsT regional and global teams.
When structured effectively, blended finance can connect entrepreneurs who need support with investors who care about impact. To make this model easier to understand, NESsT has created an infographic that clearly shows how blended finance works in practice and highlights its role in the Amazon impact ecosystem. This visual tool breaks down complex financial ideas into simple language, making it valuable for entrepreneurs, policymakers, partners, and anyone interested in advancing the Amazon bioeconomy through innovative financing.
In the first half of 2025, Lirio Fund enterprises Kulkao, Lagunas de los Condores, and Pebani received repeat loans from NESsT, reflecting our continued confidence in the enterprises’ business models and impact. Read to learn more about their continued impact and growth as part of our fund portfolio.
Many community-based enterprises in emerging sustainable socio-bioeconomy value chains lack the means and infrastructure to adopt digital monitoring and communication tools to track forest conservation and improve their production processes. With support from Cisco Foundation, in 2021, NESsT launched a search for early-stage technology enterprises that provide sustainable livelihoods to underserved communities and regenerate the environment. Read more about the initiative learnings here.
Most investments with a gender lens support companies led by women serving women, but this is not enough. Setting the intention to improve the lives of women is crucial because it sets to transform the negative ways in which people perceive gender differences. NESsT created a step-by-step process to investors develop their own gender lens investing (GLI) strategy.
In Latin America, while the participation of women in the labor market increased in recent years, women are still overrepresented in low-income or non-remunerated household work. Two social enterprises in the NESsT - IKEA Social Entrepreneurship Latin America Accelerator run training programs designed to help women land salaried employment, freelancing opportunities, and micro-entrepreneurship -- the choice is theirs!
