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Sarona: A private investment firm with a heart
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With the right partners and strategy, growing highly successful and profitable companies can have a significant developmental impact. This is what drives Sarona: building a diversified portfolio of funds and companies to deliver growth that matters. - photo by John Hoffmire
Sarona is a private impact investment firm, deploying growth capital to reach growth-stage companies in high-growth countries across frontier and emerging markets. It is essentially what is called a fund of funds. It invests in a number of different impact investment funds and, in some ways, acts like a mutual fund of private investment vehicles. One of the main differences is that you cannot move in and out of your investments in this type of fund of funds.

Through their primary strategy of investing in local private equity funds, they seek to build companies that deliver high risk-adjusted returns while promoting positive ethical, social and environmental values. They aim to carefully select only those local managers who are able to demonstrate that they add real strategic and operational value to the companies they invest in. They believe that small to mid-market companies, in their expansion stage, represent one of the best risk-adjusted opportunities within these fast-growing markets and they prioritize this for two reasons. Often it is these fast-growing companies that create the most and best employment for growing populations and offer good returns to the investors.

Because it is extremely difficult to capture these types of opportunities without a local presence, they adopt the fund of funds approach to investing. The fund of funds model enables them to focus on cultivating lasting relationships built on mutual trust and respect with experienced local fund managers who are able to navigate the complex realities of their home markets.

With the right partners and strategy, growing highly successful and profitable companies can have a significant developmental impact. This is what drives Sarona: building a diversified portfolio of funds and companies to deliver growth that matters.

Sarona Frontier Markets Fund 2 has been widely recognized as a particularly successful example of a good impact investment fund of funds. With a $15mm equity guarantee from the Canadian government, and a $50mm credit guarantee from OPIC (a U.S. government agency), the fund raised $150mm of equity and debt, driving private capital into mid-market companies in a careful interplay of finance and values. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations are at the core of how Sarona implements its strategy.

In 2015, the companies in Saronas portfolio made great strides in their effort to create and improve jobs. They reported a 6 percent increase in the number of jobs, resulting in 86,145 full-time positions at 146 reporting companies. The number of net jobs created was 4,558, or 31 jobs per reporting company. Companies continued to provide high quality benefit packages. Health insurance was the most popular benefit (69 percent). The majority of employers also provided maternity and paternity leave (57 percent) and disability coverage (50 percent).

Saronas ESG and impact policy outlines how the companys beliefs will be reflected in its operations. It sets expectations for how Sarona will consider ESG issues and impact outcomes in its funds. For Sarona, consideration of ESG issues means taking material, ethical, environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities into account when making investment decisions. At the same time, Sarona defines impact investments as investments made with the intention of generating positive social and environmental outcomes alongside a financial return.

Sometimes, the work of a fund group such as Sarona jumps off the page when one cites an example. With the support of the Canadian government and a group called MEDA, Cleopatra Hospital Group in Egypt is setting an example with a pilot training scheme designed to empower nurses and enhance their skill set. Encouraged by the fund manager invested in by Sarona, The Abraaj Group, Cleopatra also implemented a sophisticated, female-oriented HR policy and benefit scheme that ensures staff is paid according to merit rather than gender something that is altogether uncommon in Egypt.
When downsizing becomes a journey of the heart
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There are no price tags or expectations at a Pay It Forward party. And that's what makes what happens feel magical. - photo by Lois M. Collins
I spent Saturday evening at a Pay It Forward party, pondering a friends kitchen casseroles and photo frames, her DVDs and music CDs and an angel tree topper. I would cock my head a little and gaze at each item, trying to picture whether it would fit well in my little corner of the world.

Paula and Lloyd Eldredge are downsizing their lives, as many people do when the children have grown and flown and a five-bedroom house seems a bit much to handle. But theyre doing it differently than most people would.

Theirs is a concept that I hope will change how I downsize, too, when I finally quit talking about it and start doing it. Id like to steal their notion and I hope others follow suit.

At their Pay It Forward party, nothing had a price tag, though nearly everything was for sale. You could take two or 10 of the dishes and decide what each one was worth to you. Buyers simply stuffed their cash or check in a vase in the center of the kitchen counter, amid some of the household goods. If you needed something they had, but you'd been going through a rough patch, you were welcome to help yourself and not pay them anything, though the Eldredges hoped those folks would do something kind in the future for someone else as a form of payment.

They had enough items to fill four rooms and cover the front lawn. And they attracted a crowd of people to match. Its an irresistible combination: An invitation to browse someones belongings, get a variety of items at a good price (we snagged a post-hole digger, among other things) and feel you are accomplishing something good. Before the party started, the couple had picked two charities that are very dear to their hearts, and when it was over theyd raised enough to be able to donate more than $1,100 to each.

Then they started looking at how they could use the items that hadnt been snagged in ways that would help others. As we left them with our goodies in hand, they were gathering boxes of movies for a shelter that helps youths and pondering resettlement organizations that might like some of the kitchen gear.

When my husband and I married 20 years ago, we had both been on our own for quite some time, had good jobs and didnt need much in the way of household goods. So instead of gifts, we asked friends to write a check to one of our two favorite charities in the amount theyd have spent on a wedding present and throw it in a wishing well at our reception.

Our friends were very generous more so, I think, than if they were purchasing toasters and baking dishes for us.

In the decades since we did that, weve sometimes been on the receiving end of peoples generosity. Its not something you plan on or look forward to. But without the help of my friends and family at different times as my husband has gone through a very trying and lengthy medical challenge, including organ transplant, Im not sure wed have remained afloat.

Life is like that. Most of us are blessed with opportunities to give and also to receive. Each comes with its own set of lessons for the human heart. Both are surprisingly easy and also challenging.

But the best part of being human is that life provides so many ways and occasions to connect to others, to buoy and embrace and share life's road if you're willing. We all carry ever-changing bags of rocks. Sometimes were cruising downhill with them and theyre shiny and beautiful baubles that dont weigh very much. Sometimes were trudging straight uphill and they feel like theyre chunks of granite.

When the loads light, you pay it forward. When it weighs a ton, theres nothing better than someone willing to lighten your load.