Child-Lens Investing Framework Makes TIME's Best Inventions List

TIME named the Child-Lens Investing Framework (CLIF) one of the best inventions of 2024 in its annual issue devoted to innovative ideas making a difference in the world. 

The CLIF was developed by UNICEF USA, UNICEF's Innovative Finance Hub, Tideline and others, and was co-funded by the Finnish Government. Its goal is to ask and support the investment community to prioritize children in their investment strategies.

The child lens recognizes that investments across a diverse range of sectors and themes can affect children intentionally and unintentionally, directly or indirectly. Without such a lens, the impact children experience could go unrecognized, as children are not direct economic agents, and are therefore underrepresented stakeholders in investment decision making.

This award ... reinforces our commitment to big thinking and bold action in service to ensuring every child has the opportunity to thrive. — Cristina Shapiro, UNICEF USA Chief Strategy Officer and President of the Impact Fund for Children

Gender-lens investing, another and perhaps best-known tool of this kind, prompts investors to consider gender more intentionally in their decision making. And it works: research shows that the gender-lens investment practice of having at least three women on a board correlates with better financial results in the long term.

“We are honored to receive this recognition from TIME,” said Cristina Shapiro, Chief Strategy Officer and President of the Impact Fund for Children at UNICEF USA. “The framework illustrates how investing in children can be a powerful mechanism for societal progress, guiding investors to optimize for positive outcomes for children, while also managing risk to children’s well-being. It provides a roadmap and a set of tools for investors and asset owners to recognize and manage the impact that their investments have on children — regardless of strategy type or sector focus.”

Shapiro continued: "This award validates our approach that investing in children is investing in our collective future. It reinforces our commitment to big thinking and bold action in service to ensuring every child has the opportunity to thrive."

The framework's guidance steers investments toward companies that advance children’s best interests through business practices and projects that positively and proactively influence child outcomes. It can be adopted and scaled by any fund manager and asset owner to achieve the same goal: better outcomes for young people.

Calvert Impact Capital — a market leader in the global impact investing industry that invests in communities that are typically overlooked by traditional finance — is a UNICEF USA collaborator working with interested portfolio partners to understand their impact on children, using the relevant metrics to do so. They are also exploring how to integrate the child risk questionnaire into their due diligence questionnaire.

Along with the Investor Toolkit, UNICEF and the Impact Fund for Children have developed a DDQ and a Child-Lens Metrics Bank to help investors implement the child lens. 

Children are tomorrow's innovators and drivers of economic growth. They are the future. Yet, over 1 billion children around the globe are deprived of their rights to a quality education, equitable health care, safe water and nutrition. Child-lens investing has the power to change that.

Join us. Visit unicefusa.org or email cshapiro@unicefusa.org to learn more.