‘They gave me $40 and a bus ticket’ — helping former prison inmates
How one US company is using impact investing to get people back on their feet after release.
Impact investing is growing, but too slowly given the staggering annual funding gap of USD2.5 trillion to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. And the greatest challenges for people and planet won’t stand for half measures. We need much, much more impact capital to increase prosperity and social progress for all, eliminate inequalities and injustices and preserve the planet.
That's why we've teamed up with the Financial Times for the second time to put impact in the big headlines and on the front pages. And to mobilise more mainstream capital for impact.
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Sitting in a small room in his apartment block’s co-working space in Yonkers, New York, Andre Peart joins a 10am call with his IT team halfway across the country.
The 33-year-old chief executive and founder of Untapped Solutions is chatting to colleagues about technology updates to their free platform which, since 2020, has offered support to people coming out of prison — helping them to find jobs, and access healthcare and education.
Besides being a case management system, the platform offers a subscription service to non-profit and government bodies, for job referrals, and also creates reports on former inmates’ progress.
Information logged on the system can then be analysed to show organisations what they can do to help people more quickly and efficiently.
