Fudan University, China

The Great SDGs Challenge in Impact Financing

Training the next generation of responsible leaders in finance to fully understand the importance of social enterprises and what their funding needs are to grow effectively.

Future responsible leaders in Global Finance are not fully prepared for the task of deploying impact investments based on the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This issue is extremely prevalent as we look at the lack of funding for early stage social enterprises who are focused on deploying SDGs across the globe, and the unacceptable financial industry practices such as Greenwashing.

To address the issues of optimal financial practices for our graduate program, a fifth of the course credits in our Elite Master of Finance Program (2 Year) at Fanhai International School of Finance, Fudan University (FISF) is based on experiential and live learning classes including ones in the Culture, Art, Responsibility and Ethics (C.A.R.E.) module which is provided to our first year students. 

This project delivers on the requirement of SDG4 by providing real-world interaction and cooperation between finance students and top social enterprises so they can understand the challenges faced and be supportive to similar businesses in the near future. The extended connectivity also fulfil the objectives of SDG8 and SDG9 as it highlights the challenges of social enterprises and help to promote their causes to finance professionals.  And, lastly it is setup to demonstrate the power of partnership in the deployment of the SDGs as part of SDG17.

A final blue paper is delivered at the end of the one day (8 hour) course.

Annual carbon savings: 

• CO2t savings 2021/2022: Going through Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS) at the moment. 

Top 3 Learnings

1. We need to design SDGs driven coursework that are as impactful as the social impact projects that we are focused on helping.
2. Students can learn better if there is an output to their coursework such as customized SDGs content with a final deliverable in the form of a published paper.
3. We need to make SDGs relevant to the future responsible leaders in the finance industry as they are being trained, so that we can be ahead of the curve.