Poverty Reduction Through Social Entrepreneurship Coalition

09/10/2026

𝙁𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙋𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙎𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙚: 𝙎𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙉𝙚𝙭𝙩 𝘼𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙖 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙒𝙀𝙀 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙚-𝙍𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙎𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙀𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙚𝙨

How can social enterprises accelerate progress on women’s economic empowerment (WEE) and unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) in the remaining years of the Sustainable Development Goals and beyond? This question brought participants together during the WEE and UCDW Breakout Workshop of the 5th Social Enterprise Advocacy and Leveraging (SEAL) Asia Conference on August 13, 2026. The workshop reflected on ISEA and its partners’ work on WEE and care over the past decade and invited participants to help shape a strategy for deepening and scaling this work across the social enterprise sector.

Jo Villanueva, ISEA’s Gender and WEE Consultant, presented the draft Strategic Roadmap for Women’s Economic Empowerment and Addressing Unpaid Care and Domestic Work in Social Enterprises in Asia, 2027–2030. Building on ISEA’s work since 2016, the roadmap recognizes that WEE goes beyond income, employment, or participation in enterprise. It requires greater agency, voice, leadership, access to and control over resources, and decision-making power, while addressing unpaid care so that economic participation does not simply add to women’s workload and time poverty. It also recognizes that social enterprises are not automatically gender-transformative because they pursue a social mission; they must intentionally address the gender norms and unequal power relations that shape enterprises, value chains, households, and communities.

Reacting to the roadmap were Dr. Rosalinda Ofreneo of Homenet Philippines, Joeramie Balintongog of Global Organic and Wellness Corporation, and Emilia Tri Setyowati of Bina Swadaya Foundation, who affirmed its direction while challenging the sector to make the strategy more grounded in the diverse realities of women and communities. Their reflections highlighted the need for an intersectional and life-course approach; meaningful women’s voice, leadership and collective action; recognition of care as a universal right and shared social responsibility; and strategies adaptable to different cultural and community contexts. They also pointed to the conditions needed to translate principles into practice, from peer learning and adequate financing to digital inclusion, stronger collaboration with governments and other institutions, and attention to the social norms and power relations that shape women’s lives.

Small-group discussions reinforced these messages and helped identify an emerging agenda for the sector. Participants called for stronger care systems, closing the gender digital divide, gender-responsive financing and long-term ecosystem support, and greater engagement of families, communities, and institutions in shifting discriminatory norms. They also emphasized that progress should be measured not only through women’s income or participation, but through changes in agency, leadership, decision-making, time autonomy, access to social protection and services, and the sharing of care responsibilities.

Across the discussions, one message stood out: women should not be seen merely as beneficiaries or sources of labor, but as leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, and co-creators of social and economic value. This means embedding WEE and care into the mission, governance, employment practices, investment decisions, value chains, and impact measures of social enterprises.

The workshop underscored that advancing WEE and addressing unpaid care requires more than increasing the number of women participating in enterprises and value chains. The challenge is to transform the conditions under which women participate, so that they have not only economic opportunities, but also the time, resources, voice, agency, and support to thrive.

08/10/2026

08/10/2026

ꜱᴏᴄɪᴀʟ ᴇɴᴛᴇʀᴘʀɪꜱᴇꜱ ᴀꜱ ᴀᴄᴄᴇʟᴇʀᴀᴛᴏʀꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴡᴏᴍᴇɴ’ꜱ ᴇᴄᴏɴᴏᴍɪᴄ ᴇᴍᴘᴏᴡᴇʀᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄᴀʀᴇ-ʀᴇꜱᴘᴏɴꜱɪᴠᴇ ᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ

On August 13, 2026, the 5th Social Enterprise Advocacy and Leveraging (SEAL) Conference put the spotlight on women’s economic empowerment (WEE) and care through the plenary session, “Social Enterprises and Changemakers Leading the Way Towards Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care-Responsive Actions and Policy,” held at the University of the Philippines Diliman in Quezon City, Philippines.

WEE and care is one of the critical social entrepreneurship acceleration pathways explored at the 5th SEAL Conference as we enter the final years of the Sustainable Development Goals. Bringing together social enterprise leaders and changemakers from the Philippines, Indonesia, and India, the session surfaced both the persistent barriers that prevent women from participating in and benefiting equitably from economic opportunities, and the concrete ways social enterprises are working to transform these conditions.

Christie Rowena Plantilla, Chief Executive Officer of the Federation of Peoples’ Sustainable Development Cooperative (FPSDC) in the Philippines, highlighted how women in agricultural value chains continue to face economic vulnerability, unpaid care and time poverty, and gaps in skills and capacity. She shared how FPSDC is embedding gender equality and care-responsive practices into its organizational systems and support to member-cooperatives through gender-responsive policies, leadership opportunities, labor-saving technologies, capacity building, and market access. Through Handholding in Viable Enterprises (HIVE) and Strengthening Her Inclusion, Nurturing Enterprise & Empowerment (Project SHINE), FPSDC demonstrates how cooperatives can strengthen women-led enterprises while addressing structural barriers to women’s participation and leadership.

Emilia Tri Setyowati, Executive Secretary of Bina Swadaya Foundation in Indonesia, highlighted women’s vital roles across agricultural value chains and the barriers they continue to face, including limited access to productive resources, finance, technology, training and markets, restrictive gender norms, and unpaid care responsibilities. Drawing from Bina Swadaya’s work in organic dairy and community-based enterprises, she showed how capacity building, market access, financial management, collective action, and enterprise development can strengthen women’s livelihoods and leadership. She emphasized that WEE requires an integrated ecosystem that connects these interventions, engages both women and men, and is supported by long-term financing, technology, partnerships, and policies that help reduce and redistribute unpaid care work.

A. Umarani, Head of the Advanced Centre for Enabling Women Empowerment of DHAN Foundation in India, shared how strong women-led institutions and collective action can enable women to become owners, leaders, decision-makers, and stewards of resources. DHAN’s model connects self-help groups and social enterprises with financial inclusion, livelihoods and asset creation, social protection, digital inclusion, leadership development, and policy engagement. Its experience demonstrates that low-income women can successfully govern resources, sustain their own social enterprises, and lead collective action, provided there is an enabling ecosystem and sustained support for women-led institutions.

Across the three countries’ experiences, one message stood out: women’s economic empowerment cannot be advanced through isolated interventions. It requires transforming the systems around women, connecting finance, markets, skills, technology, social protection and care; building women’s leadership and collective power; and creating enabling policies and partnerships that can sustain and scale change. The session underscored the critical role of social enterprises not only as implementers of solutions, but as innovators, advocates, and partners in building more inclusive, gender-equitable and care-responsive economies.

08/10/2026

𝐹𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝐼𝓃𝒹𝒾𝓋𝒾𝒹𝓊𝒶𝓁 𝒮𝓉𝑜𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓈 𝓉𝑜 𝒞𝑜𝓁𝓁𝑒𝒸𝓉𝒾𝓋𝑒 𝒜𝒸𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃. an article featuring GlowCorp, one of the WEE Connect Community of Practice. 𝔾𝕝𝕠𝕨ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕡 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℙ𝕙𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕡𝕡𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕤 𝕚𝕤 𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕤𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕚𝕧𝕚𝕕𝕦𝕒𝕝 𝕖𝕩𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕘𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕢𝕦𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕔𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖 𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕘𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣- 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖-𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕡𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕚𝕧𝕖 𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕜𝕡𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕖𝕤 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕧𝕒𝕝𝕦𝕖 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕤.

Read more here:
https://investinginwomen.asia/iw_stories_of_change/glowcorp/?fbclid=IwY2xjawUzxGlleHRuA2FlbQIxMABwZG9mBWJyaWQRMWwzWW1qRWVjTXJhdlhHWjVzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeYnYuBTbxLzOyKivHJx_QayoUiHWxdjydL17tIsY8DGhbZ5N_M0IwxfxGPi4_aem_sEpInTY6kqiz0qjG7_5LXg

“I thought it was just my experience.” That sentiment surfaces repeatedly in conversations about care, work, and gender equality in the workplace, including within social enterprises. Employees balancing paid work with caregiving responsibilities. Management trying to support staff while navigat...

08/10/2026

ꜱᴏᴄɪᴀʟ ɪɴᴠᴇꜱᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴍᴜꜱᴛ ɢᴏ ʙᴇʏᴏɴᴅ ᴄᴀᴘɪᴛᴀʟ ᴛᴏ ᴀᴅᴠᴀɴᴄᴇ ᴡᴏᴍᴇɴ’ꜱ ᴇᴄᴏɴᴏᴍɪᴄ ᴇᴍᴘᴏᴡᴇʀᴍᴇɴᴛ

Advancing women's economic empowerment (WEE) at scale requires finance, policy, and social norms to move together, not capital alone. This was the central message from Hannah Birdsey, Chief Executive Officer of the Investing in Women (IW), during the plenary session, “Social Investments for Poverty Reduction through Social Entrepreneurship: Focusing on Addressing the Digital Divide, Circularity and Climate Action, and Women’s Economic Empowerment,” on the second day of the 5th Social Enterprise Advocacy and Leveraging (SEAL) Conference. Drawing on nearly a decade of IW's work across Southeast Asia, Birdsey highlighted the need to address the systemic barriers that continue to limit women's economic participation.

One such barrier is access to capital. Research with SAGANA revealed that Southeast Asia's 12.8 million women-led SMEs face a USD 6.6 billion funding gap, reflecting not simply a scarcity of capital, but a mismatch between available financing and the business models and growth patterns of women-led enterprises. Birdsey challenged participants to consider whether existing financial and market systems are designed to recognize and support women-led enterprises, or whether these systems themselves continue to constrain their growth.

But finance is only part of the equation. Birdsey emphasized that gender-inclusive workplace policies should be viewed as investments rather than compliance costs, contributing to workplace well-being, retention and organizational resilience. Yet policies alone do not automatically change behavior. Employees may hesitate to avail themselves of flexible work and care-related benefits due to fear of perceived social stigma, while employers may misread low uptake as lack of demand. These dynamics are reflected in IW’s 2024 Social Norms, Attitudes and Practices Survey (SNAPS), which showed that while many young, urban Filipinos support more gender-equal sharing of care and economic roles, these beliefs do not always translate into everyday behavior.

Birdsey captured this challenge through a compelling metaphor: policies and institutional frameworks form the "hardware" of a system, while social norms represent the "software" that determines how the system actually operates. Both must change for WEE to advance at scale. In this transformation, social enterprises can play an important role as changemakers–testing and demonstrating gender- and care-responsive business practices, showing that alternative workplace and enterprise models are possible, and helping shift expectations within the wider business and investment ecosystem. IW’s collaborations with Oxfam Pilipinas and the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia (ISEA) in the Philippines offer examples of how social enterprises can pioneer these approaches and generate lessons that can influence broader business practice.

Birdsey’s message called for a broader understanding of social investment for WEE: one that goes beyond financing individual women or enterprises to transforming the markets and systems in which they operate. When finance, enabling policy, and social norms move together, social investment can help create conditions in which women-led enterprises can grow, workplaces can become more inclusive and care-responsive, and women can participate in and benefit more equitably from the economy.

08/10/2026

08/10/2026

05/10/2026

From Compliance to Practice: FPSDC Brings Gender and Care into Cooperative Leadership

From July to September 2026, the Federation of Peoples’ Sustainable Development Cooperative (FPSDC) brought conversations on gender equality, women’s economic empowerment (WEE), and unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) directly to cooperative leaders and stakeholders through its Regional Ownership Meetings in Tacloban, Nueva Vizcaya, Quezon City, Pasig City, South Cotabato, North Cotabato, and Cagayan de Oro, reaching 217 cooperative leaders and stakeholders nationwide.

In the recently concluded Ownership Meeting in Cagayan de Oro City, member cooperatives from Regions IX, X, and Caraga reflected on women’s important but often invisible and undervalued roles across agricultural value chains, persistent barriers to resources and decision-making, and the gender norms that leave many women taking on greater economic responsibilities while continuing to carry much of the childcare and household work. The discussion highlighted how cooperatives can help change these conditions by looking beyond women’s participation to examine who has access to opportunities and resources, who leads and makes decisions, how work and benefits are shared, and how unpaid care affects members’ ability to participate fully. This Gender and Care Session was facilitated by Leilani Briosos-McDonough (ISEA) and Katrina Guanio (Oxfam Pilipinas).

FPSDC deliberately integrated these conversations into its Ownership Meetings as an existing space for engaging members, sharing programs and services, strengthening partnerships, and gathering priorities for the federation’s next Strategic Plan. Through SHINE, these discussions are translated into organizational practice, including policy reviews, integration of WEE and care into planning and leadership discussions, and disaster preparedness measures responsive to differentiated risks. As a member of WEE Connect, EmpowerHer’s Community of Practice, FPSDC is taking shared learning on WEE and care further across its own network and closer to its member cooperatives.

These sessions is part of FPSDC’s Strengthening Her Inclusion, Nurturing Enterprise & Empowerment (SHINE) Project, a three-year initiative supported through the EmpowerHer Project, jointly implemented by the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia (ISEA) and Oxfam Pilipinas, with support from Investing in Women. SHINE seeks to strengthen the integration of gender equality, WEE, and care into cooperative leadership and practice, helping move Gender and Development (GAD) from a compliance requirement toward a practical tool for more inclusive governance, enterprise development, and member engagement.

FPSDC’s experience shows that mainstreaming gender equality and care can begin by transforming the spaces, systems, and decisions cooperatives already use. By embedding WEE and care into its leadership, policies, planning, and enterprise development, FPSDC is helping move gender equality from commitment to everyday cooperative practice.

02/10/2026

From Awareness to Action: Co-op Ville Advances WEE and Care-Responsive Governance

On September 24, Co-op Ville Multipurpose Cooperative (MPC) in Mabuaya, Cagayan de Oro City welcomed representatives from The Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia (ISEA), Oxfam Pilipinas, and the Federation of Peoples' Sustainable Development Cooperative - FPSDC to share its progress in Mainstreaming Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) and Care-Responsive Governance in Co-op Ville Project. Led by Chairperson Ms. Emma Camino and Ms. Mary Jane Sabut, OIC of its HIVE coco sugar enterprise, Co-op Ville members, staff, and youth leaders shared how they are translating their learning from the EmpowerHer Project into changes within the cooperative and the community.

Ms. Sabut shared that the reorientation of the Board of Directors on Gender and Development (GAD) helped reactivate the cooperative’s GAD Committee and led to the development of a GAD Plan grounded more strongly in the actual experiences and needs of women, not simply prepared for compliance. Through EmpowerHer, the cooperative has also examined gender roles, social norms, women’s economic participation, and unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) in its own context. According to Chairperson Camino, this process strengthened their awareness of women’s rights and encouraged the cooperative to make more intentional decisions to promote gender equality in its operations, membership, and organizational governance.

But some of the most visible signs of change can be found beyond policies and plans. The team proudly showed its learning hub, which is set to be launched this coming weekend, where children can learn and play under the supervision of volunteers from the cooperative’s youth organization. The hub can also provide parents with a safe and reliable place to leave their children while they work, attend to other responsibilities, or reclaim some time for rest and self-care. It is a practical example of what recognizing care can look like at the community level: understanding that women’s and parents’ ability to participate in economic activities is closely connected to who provides care, and what support systems are available to them.

The visit also highlighted how this care-responsive approach connects with Co-op Ville’s continuing enterprise development. The group visited its HIVE coco sugar facility and learned about other livelihood initiatives, including black soldier fly farming, chicken raising, and a planned dimsum production facility. As part of the changes being introduced, the cooperative is working to ensure that workers in its coco sugar production and emerging enterprises have access to benefits, while creating a pathway for part-time workers to transition to full-time employment. With continuing support from FPSDC, these initiatives are expected not only to expand livelihood opportunities for women and men members, but also to improve the quality and security of work available to them.

The , jointly implemented by ISEA and Oxfam Pilipinas, supports social enterprises in integrating gender equality, WEE, and care-responsive approaches into their organizations and agricultural value chains. Co-op Ville is also a member of WEE Connect, the project’s Community of Practice, where social enterprises learn from one another and explore practical ways of advancing WEE and addressing UCDW.

Co-op Ville’s experience shows that becoming gender- and care-responsive is a process of moving from awareness to institutional and practical change, from understanding women’s lived realities, to strengthening policies and governance, providing care-supportive solutions, improving employment conditions, and expanding opportunities for more secure and sustainable livelihoods. In doing so, the cooperative offers a concrete example of how social enterprises can advance gender equality not only through whom they serve, but also through how they govern, how they treat workers, how they recognize care, and how they create economic opportunities.

02/10/2026

ICYMI: October is flying by fast and turning out to be our busiest month for Social Entetprises yet! 🚀

Just us taking a quick breather from our own ganaps to spotlight an upcoming event from one of our PRESENT Coalition members 💚🌱

Check the details below and come through to support if you're around!

October is going to be a busy month for Social Enterprise! 🌱

From the Social Enterprise Month launch and marketplace to competitions, summits, partnerships, and more, there’s a lot happening this October.

Check out the upcoming events and mark your calendars. We hope to see you there!