Cooperativa Agraria Cafetalera Santa Ana is a coffee cooperative in Perené, Junín that works with around 170 coffee farmers, nearly half women who are heads of their households and over half are over the age of 45.
Impact investing trailblazer ImpactAssets has named NESsT to the 2026 IA 50 Fund Managers list, a publicly available database that highlights fund managers delivering demonstrable social and environmental impact, setting the standard for uncovering opportunities across private markets. This is the fourth time NESsT has been included in the IA 50, first as an Emerging Manager in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
World Day of Social Justice reaffirms our commitment to poverty eradication, full and productive employment and decent work for all, and social inclusion as the interrelated pillars of social development.
NESsT is proud to announce that the Lirio Fund has surpassed $20 million USD in disbursements through 37 loans, which have contributed to over 1.5 million hectares of land preserved and 16,000 lives positively impacted.
This video brings together testimonies from leaders in the sociobioeconomy who have participated in key climate and finance forums, such as COP30 in Belém, with support from NESsT. Grounded in lived experience, these leaders’ perspectives highlight why their presence is essential in spaces where far-reaching decisions are made.
In 2025, the NESsT Lirio Fund extended repeat loans to Greenbox and Cuencas del Huallaga, reflecting our continued commitment to these enterprises’ business models and impact. Operating in regions where farming families have few income livelihood options and often turn to illicit crops and environment-damaging monocultures to generate quick income, these enterprises offer sustainable livelihood alternatives through sustainable, organic agriculture and meaningful technical assistance.
COP30, held in Brazil and hosted in the Amazon for the first time, marked a turning point in global discussions on climate and development. Against this backdrop, NESsT has been working more intentionally to bring local realities from the Amazon into global debates around access to financing. We spoke with Cairo Bastos, Program Manager at NESsT Brazil, about his key takeaways from Belém, what it takes in practice to build development models rooted in local territories, and why financing for the Amazon is a topic that concerns taxpayers and citizens more broadly.
In this interview, we speak with Mihai Cepoi, Chief Everything Officer, Jobful, and IKEA co-worker Rumen Mihaylov, Insights Capability Leader, Inter IKEA Group, whose exchange grew out of the NESsT - IKEA Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program in Central and Eastern Europe. What began as a structured mentoring relationship quickly evolved into a space for honest dialogue and shared learning.
After leaving Ukraine and arriving in Poland, Olena faced challenges while trying to secure stability for her family. Through Women’s Entrepreneurship Foundation (WEF), she connected with several programs designed to support displaced women navigate these new systems and access clear pathways to quality jobs and entrepreneurship.
For over 50 years, FCC has worked to improve the livelihoods of small farmers in an area of Colombia greatly affected by armed violence. The NESsT Lirio Fund extends a revolving working capital line to this long-standing federation of coffee growers, complementing the strategic support it receives as part of the NESsT Acceleration Portfolio.
Indigenous Peoples remain largely underrepresented in global decision-making spaces — revealing a contradiction between their leading role in protecting nature and their absence from the forums where environmental and economic policies are defined. This exclusion is no coincidence: it reflects historical, linguistic, financial, and political barriers that limit the access of those who live in and protect the territories to the tables where the future of biodiversity and the economy is decided.
Beginning next week, NESsT will participate in COP30 Brazil, in Belém, Pará — a historic conference that will place the Amazon at the center of global climate discussions and mark the largest Indigenous presence ever recorded in UN negotiations. We will be there alongside entrepreneurs from our Amazon portfolio, bringing experiences born in the territories and showing that the most effective climate solutions come from those who live in and protect the forest.
