Thank you for your continual support for ARUN.

ARUN strives to build a social investment platform that originates in Japan.

Last week, I attended the Sankalp Forum held in Delhi, India.
Sankalp is a social entrepreneur forum organized by the social investment pioneer in India, Intelecap, and this year makes its 7th year.

Sankalp Forum gathers entrepreneurs from all parts of India, and over 1,000 participants worldwide such as private investors, funds, financial institutions, professionals such as accountants and lawyers, accelerators and incubators whose role is to assist entrepreneurs in their developments.

I was impressed by the people’s energy to transform many new ideas into practices. There was a courageous woman who started up a business to invest in the family manufacturing business that was started by the people in poverty, an entrepreneur who made solar electricity available for rural communities in collaboration with a Japanese company, as well as a company that created a mobile application to monitor social impact.

Social investment differs from the typical investment where it asks a fundamental question: “what is the social impact of the investment?” People who are involved in the diverse social business and social investment such as agriculture, water, waste, health care and art are creating an ecosystem where they can meet frequently to exchange information and give advice. Some people are trying to involve government for the larger impact, or based in India, some are planning to expand to Africa and South East Asia.

Many entrepreneurs ask to connect with Japan. It is our hope that ARUN will play a role in linking social entrepreneurs in India and Asia and Japan. We will have an event next month to give reports from the Sankalp study tour. Please join us!

Satoko Kono

Opening Social Investment School!
Instead of the past three-day Social Investment School on weekday evenings, we are opening a class on Saturday, May 16th. If you are one of the many who could not participate before because of your schedule, here is an opportunity to study social investment in one day! We look forward to your participation.

In April, we see many newly-hired business “freshmen” in the commuting trains. They remind me of the time when I was a new hire. Adding new staff changes a company and organization. ARUN welcomed some new staff members as well. We are moving one step at a time toward the 2nd phase. We are hoping to show you many improvements at the end of this year.

(D.S.)