One Wish: Exploring the GIIN Forum Through a Child-Centered Mission

By Mary C. Garvey and Kaitlin Watts

You can have many wishes. But if your child is sick, you have only one.” ~Dutch expression

“Every investment is affecting a child’s wellbeing.” This declaration in a child-lens investing session is perhaps the most important reminder from our time in Germany.

The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) 2025 Forum in Berlin, Germany brought together leaders in impact investing from around the world to explore how capital can drive meaningful change. It was an energizing space for advancing conversations around long-term social outcomes, an area where ICS is already playing a leadership role. While children weren’t the central theme, there were compelling discussions around expanding impact investing into areas like early childhood development, basic needs, and community infrastructure. These are critical levers for improving child and family outcomes, and it’s clear the field is starting to recognize their importance.

Blended Finance Approaches

The Forum provided enlightening and engaging reminders that ICS is on the right track as we pursue improved outcomes for young children and their families. A session on Blended Finance for Mobilization at Scale introduced us to types of blended finance archetypes and highlighted the need to create markets through blending when the status quo of financing impact needs a boost. Hearing from British-based global investors reinforced the importance of our work in the Missing Markets’ Invest in Flourishing (IIF) early childhood initiative that is backed by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Community Development Team. The premise: Bringing community and financial leaders together to create a “market in the middle” that financially values and rewards flourishing of youth, their families, and their neighborhoods.

The Opportunities and Challenges of AI

GIIN’s AI for Good session elucidated the valuable and increasing use of AI for issues around climate and nature as well as health and accessibility. One such health accessibility device – solar-powered, works offline, available in various languages – closely tracks wellness of first-time mothers and their babies in rural and underserved areas of Africa. On the heels of ICS’s publication of an AI-focused blog post and brief, this session also stressed the need for guardrails in AI that prevent harm. 

The Importance of Measurement

Finally, our Dutch colleagues leading the Child-Lens Investing: From Vision to Action session shared with us the story of the child-lens investing framework, launched by UNICEF at the GIIN Forum in Copenhagen just two years ago. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of measuring positive child outcomes were stressed. We must consider an array of indicators including access to basic needs, protection from violence, inclusion and equal opportunity. To the question of where a child-lens investing framework might end, presenters responded that all investments have direct or indirect impacts on children.

The push for stronger impact measurement and data transparency aligns with ICS’s commitment to evidence-based policy and practice. There is real momentum around using capital not just to do good, but to prove their impact, which opens doors for more rigorous, child-focused investment strategies.

We left inspired by discussions around innovations in access to care for new moms in Kenya and Madagascar, EdTech advancements for young children in Asia and robust pioneering early childhood supports in the Netherlands.

There is evidence of a place for ICS’s continued research and policy innovations not just here at home, but also abroad. Our hope remains that when a parent’s one wish is for the wellness of their child, ICS may be equipped with the tools to partner towards a solution.

Learn more about ICS’s innovative work to empower young children and their families.

1. Mary C. Garvey and Kaitlin Watts joined by Dr. Moka Lantum, attending the Bridging Healthcare Investors and Innovators reception hosted by Bayer Foundation, Elucid, Philips Foundation and GIIN. Dr. Lantum is the Founder and CEO of CheckUps COVA – an organization that connects millions of banked uninsured Africans to instant healthcare microcredits. Dr. Lantum is also the founder CheckUps Medical, a network of state-of-the art urgent care centers in Kenya.  
2. Sign for the GIIN Impact Forum 2025.
3. View of the Neukölln Navigation Canal directly across from the conference venue, the Estrel Berlin – Germany’s largest hotel.