CARE Enterprises, Inc. – a for-profit subsidiary of CARE USA – has launched the next generation of gender justice funds focused on economically empowering women all along the business value chain.

Impact investing is poised to eclipse traditional aid by ten times in the next decade, with billions of dollars committed to advance gender equality in the growing field of gender-lens investing. As we stand on the cusp of this growth curve, we recognize the opportunity to evolve the role of capital in society and a responsibility to achieve profound and measurable impact results.

We are pleased to lead and learn in this dynamic, growing field to leverage and build upon CARE’s decades of experience in embedding gender-equal policies and practices in businesses and changing labor laws around the world. The vision of CARE Enterprises is to build and implement the future of innovative impact investment vehicles to achieve measurable gender impact, based on learnings from Microvest and SEAF, a micro-finance asset manager and small enterprise assistance set of funds in emerging markets, both launched by CARE to help build wealth for women. We recognize we must change business practices and influence the purpose and allocation of capital to achieve gender equality and eradicate poverty and that blended finance investment vehicles in areas where CARE works are a powerful way to reach these goals.

CARE Enterprises, Inc. – a for-profit subsidiary of CARE USA – has launched its first gender justice impact fund focused on economically empowering women employees, consumers, and suppliers. CARE gender experts provide critical technical assistance to portfolio businesses to ensure they meet gender impact goals. Our blended finance vehicle taps into philanthropic and mission-aligned catalytic capital to attract more traditional and commercial capital to invest in women-centered businesses. This global CARE-SheTrades Impact Fund invests in target countries across three regions: South & Southeast Asia, Central America, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Bamboo Capital Partners, an impact fund manager with a successful track record in emerging markets, and the UN agency, the International Trade Center’s SheTrades initiative, have joined us in this unique collaboration.

Our holistic model economically empowers women – from women workers and consumers to supply chain business owners – and addresses gender-based violence and the intersection of gender, poverty, and climate impact as we work to shape the sector to deepen its approach to gender impact.

We believe our gender justice investment strategy offers attractive returns to investors and will help identify and remove systemic barriers that hold back poor women in emerging markets to generate increased social and economic returns for all.

Read more about our gender justice strategy here.

CARE is a global nonprofit working to save lives, defeat poverty, and achieve social justice.

CARE is most widely recognized for its long history of humanitarian assistance and development programs that improve the lives and livelihoods of people around the world. What is less commonly known is that CARE is also a pioneer in successfully adopting market-based solutions to combat poverty.

CARE Enterprises not only benefits from a team of business and development experts within CARE's global network, but also from the institutional knowledge created over decades of designing and implementing models that achieve economic opportunity for the underserved.

CARE Enterprises will leverage these assets and CARE's global footprint by working directly with CARE staff in the field to assess potential portfolio companies and provide tailored gender-justice technical assistance to help them them scale and generate strong impact outcomes for their women employees, consumers and suppliers.