Save the Children Global Ventures is a pioneer in Child Lens investing, having developed one of the first investment funds in the market specifically focused on children
Strategy
Save the Children Global Ventures (SCGV) designs its strategies around an intensive child‑lens investment approach, which delivers intentionality, integrity and rigour to investing in and for children. One of these funds is the Children’s Impact Multiplier Fund which invests in scalable businesses that improve the lives of underserved children.
The Fund supports solutions in education, healthcare, nutrition, and more across low- and middle-income countries by combining philanthropic capital with investment discipline. It offers a practical way to move beyond one-off funding and support long-term, measurable impact for children.
The Children’s Impact Multiplier Fund is a target USD 50+ million evergreen investment vehicle designed to make deep-impact investments in social enterprises, innovative finance vehicles and other projects that present exceptional opportunity for positive impact for underserved children globally. These are businesses with strong potential to scale, sustain themselves, and reach large numbers of children over time.
The strategy is closely aligned with Save the Children’s global priorities and leverages the organisation’s sectoral expertise to identify and support scalable solutions that address persistent gaps in products and services for children.
Fund attributes
The Fund operates as an evergreen vehicle that accepts contributions in the form of donations and grants, enabling patient and flexible capital to be deployed in markets where children’s needs are greatest and traditional financing is often scarce. Donor capital is pooled and invested into high-impact businesses that improve outcomes for children, and as these investments generate returns, the capital is reinvested into new opportunities, allowing it to be used multiple times. This approach increases the overall impact of each contribution while also helping to attract additional private and public capital into underserved sectors.
Key fund characteristics include:
| Attribute | Details |
| Manager | Save the Children Global Ventures |
| Fund name | Children’s Impact Multiplier Fund |
| Status | Evergreen (open-ended, perpetual) |
| Instruments | Debt and equity |
| Target fund size | USD $50 million+ |
| Ticket size | USD $250,000–1,000,000 |
| Target geography | Low- and middle-income countries |
| Priority themes | Education; Healthcare & nutrition; Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); Child protection; Cross-cutting enablers |
Applying a Child Lens to investing
Save the Children Global Ventures has developed a comprehensive set of tools to embed a child-lens approach across each stage of investment and impact management. This approach is applied across the full investment process, from pre-investment to the post-investment phases and it is grounded in clear intentionality for children. This means each opportunity is evaluated based on how it benefits children, either directly or indirectly ensuring that investments are not only financially sound, but also deliver clear and meaningful outcomes for children.
Read more: approach to Child Lens investing
Measuring impact
“Focusing on children helps us be much more intentional about what outcomes we’re intending to achieve and measure, and why they matter.” – Eve Kerubo, Head of the Children’s Impact Multiplier Fund
The Fund tracks both reach and outcomes for children. Key metrics include the number of children reached through investees, with all additional metrics developed on a case-by-case basis depending on each company’s impact strategy and intended outcomes for children and families. Across the fund, 100% of investments intentionally consider children. To find out more information on impact measurement, read the Children’s Impact Multiplier Fund’s latest impact report.
The investment case
Eve Kerubo, Head of the Children’s Impact Multiplier Fund, explains:
“Applying a Child Lens sharpens our understanding of which businesses are best positioned to serve large, often overlooked markets that serve children.”
Demand linked to children’s essential needs – such as education, childcare, nutrition and healthcare – tends to be stable and growing. Families consistently prioritise spending in these areas, even in low-income settings. This creates businesses with strong demand, predictable revenue, and clear pathways to scale. It also provides confidence in sectors that may be undervalued by traditional investors focused only on financial metrics.
“Focusing on children helps us be much more intentional about what outcomes we’re intending to achieve and measure, and why they matter. It strengthens both intentionality and accountability.”
The Fund invests across sectors using a consistent approach: backing strong businesses, structuring capital to support child-focused use cases, and tracking clear outcomes. For example the Fund has invested in:
- Jackfruit Finance, a Financial Institution dedicated to enhancing access to quality education accessibility across Kenya through tailored financing for low-fee private schools. These schools serve large numbers of children from low-income backgrounds and show strong repayment rates because parents prioritise school fees.
- Goshen Finance, a Rwandan Microfinance Institution, where SCGV’s investment was focused on lending to early childhood development centres in Rwanda to improve quality of care provision – providing access to finance to improve their infrastructure (e.g., build a new classroom) as well as quality of education (e.g., teacher training or learning materials). These centres benefit from regular income through parent payments and are part of a growing market as childcare demand increases.
- Viebeg, a business based in Rwanda whose data-driven procurement platform provides on-demand medical and pharmaceutical supplies and equipment. Its platform, VieProcure, efficiently links healthcare facilities to manufacturers and financing partners, making quality healthcare more accessible and affordable. SCGV invested in Viebeg specifically to expand its paediatric and child-related equipment and supplies product line in response to increasing demand. The investment was ringfenced specifically for children’s impact — in line with SCGV’s Child Lens approach grounded in intentionality — to increase access to quality healthcare and supplies for children, especially in more remote areas.
“This kind of child-linked demand gives us confidence in business models that might otherwise be missed without a Child Lens.”
This case study is provided for information only and should not be interpreted as constituting investment advice or any regulated activity. The information and figures provided are accurate as per the latest information publicly available and/or made available to the Impact Investing Institute for the purpose of this research at the time of publication