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The partnership,
Humanity Ventures, stems from a pledge Soros made in September
to earmark up to $500 million for investments to address
challenges facing migrants and refugees.
In a joint statement on Thursday, Mastercard and Soros said that
despite billions of dollars of humanitarian and development
assistance, millions of people remain marginalized, a situation
the private sector can help rectify.
“Migrants are often forced into lives of despair in their host
communities because they cannot gain access to financial,
healthcare and government services," Soros said.
"Our potential investment in this social enterprise, coupled
with Mastercard's ability to create products that serve
vulnerable communities, can show how private capital can play a
constructive role in solving social problems," he added.
Humanity Ventures intends to focus initially on healthcare and
education, with a goal of fostering local economic development
and entrepreneurship.
With the creation of Humanity Ventures, Soros could invest up to
$50 million to make these solutions more scalable and
sustainable, and perhaps encourage smaller projects committed to
mitigating the migration crisis.
"Humanity Ventures is intended to be profitable so as to
stimulate involvement from other businesspeople," Soros said.
"We also hope to establish standards of practice to ensure that
investments are not exploitative of the vulnerable communities
we intend to serve."
Soros opened his first foundation, the Open Society Foundations,
in 1979 when his hedge fund had reached about $100 million and
his personal wealth had climbed to about $25 million.
The Open Society Foundations began Soros’s philanthropic
activity when he gave scholarships to black South Africans under
apartheid. In the 1980s, Soros and his foundations ultimately
contributed to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.
Just last week, Soros' Open Society Foundations said it will
keep working with and financing organizations in Hungary despite
the government saying that any civil society group should be
"swept out."
(Reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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