Japan ASEAN Women Empowerment Fund (JAWEF)
Female Empowerment
- Empowering women in the ASEAN region
- First gender lens strategy in that area
- Fighting poverty, advancing inclusion
Our investment goals and strategy
Female entrepreneurs
We provide loans to microfinance institutions that help female entrepreneurs in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, empowering women in business.
Mobilising investors
With its blended finance structure, this fund leverages first-loss and mezzanine tranches to minimise risk and encourage institutional investors.
Stronger economies
Empowering women financially and socially not only benefits them and their immediate families and communities, but also leads to stronger economies in the long-term.
Fund characteristics
| Fund inception | 2016 |
| Asset class | Private debt (blended finance) |
| Status | Closed |
| Liquidity | Closed-end |
| NAV frequency | Quarterly |
| Domicile and legal structure | Luxembourg, SICAV-SIF |
| SFDR classification | Article 9 |
| External AIFM | BlueOrchard Asset Management (Luxembourg) S.A. |
| Investment manager | BlueOrchard Finance Ltd |
| Depositary | Banque de Luxembourg S.A. |
| Administrator | European Fund Administration S.A. |
SDGs addressed
Core SDGs
Aligned SDGs
Core SDGs: Core SDGs are those that address the impact intent and/or sustainability investment objective of a given fund.
Aligned SDGs: Aligned SDGs are those that the fund’s investees promote through responsible ESG management practices.
Impact KPIs
Contact
Empowering women with microfinance
Sonata Finance’s efforts to include Indian womenSonata Finance, an Indian microfinance institution, is an example of the success of BlueOrchard’s specific gender-lens investment work with JAWEF. A JAWEF investee since 2014, Sonata has been working to promote and efficiently deliver microfinance services to underserved and excluded women across India since its inception in 2005. Sonata strives to reduce poverty by providing group loans to women in remote rural areas, with a focus on income-generating loans.