Above: Sharrow Community Forum’s new youth facility, one of many community initiatives that will be supported by the Dream Big South Yorkshire Fund.

The Dream Big South Yorkshire Fund is bringing child-lens investing to the UK for the first time, demonstrating how investment can be designed around the needs and wellbeing of children and families.

The £500,000 pilot brings together the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, Key Fund, philanthropic partners and Save the Children, with advisory support from Save the Children Global Ventures. Using SCGV’s child-lens investment framework, the fund combines grants, loans and other forms of flexible finance to support organisations tackling child poverty across South Yorkshire.

Importantly, the pilot is also designed as a learning opportunity: testing what kinds of capital different organisations need and using those insights to inform the development of a larger fund. The ambition extends well beyond South Yorkshire, with lessons from the initiative helping to build a blueprint for child-lens investing that can be applied in other markets around the world.

Read the full article in Pioneers Post to learn more about how the partnership came together and what it could mean for the future of child-lens investing.