June 2015 Frontier Market Scouts Program Begins!

1430780817742June 1st, 2015 marked the beginning of the Summer FMS program. 27 participants traveled from around the globe from as far as South Africa and India to Monterey in order to learn more about impact investing and social enterprise. The FMS Summer program was kicked off by Morgan Simon from Transform Finance who taught the introductory class on impact investment and social enterprise. Participants were led through definitions of terminology surrounding impact investment as well as the history and current players of the sector. Morgan challenged participants to be “conscientious consumers” of both sectors.

Participants were led through debate style discussion on topics ranging from the privatization of education to critiquing Microfinance and the TOMS Shoes social enterprise model. Morgan also discussed the importance of how impact is measured – “it really depends on what you see as important when you are looking at ways in which to measure impact – are you looking at the status quo? local level or international level?” Participants were left with questions from Morgan to consider for the rest of the training program maybe most important of which: “Who was asked? Who decided? and Who suffers if you fail?”

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