CEO of the IKEA Foundation, Per Heggenes: a wide-ranging conversation on climate, impact, collaboration, refugees, Ukraine and optimism

Do One Better with Alberto Lidji in Philanthropy, Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship

Per joins us back on the show after last having been with us on 6th September 2020. We continue where we left off and start by looking at the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), which the IKEA Foundation set up with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund.

GEAPP is working in partnership with countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean to operationalise renewable energy transitions and expansions, which will reduce greenhouse gases, extend clean power to underserved people, and enable green jobs. As Per notes, we need to embrace radical collaboration – it’s the way to get to Net Zero.

We also look at the IKEA Foundation’s approach to measurement, learning and evaluation; the importance of using evidence to guide grant-making, and the importance of funding research to build such bodies of evidence when they don’t exist. Evidence is key for achieving systems change, and philanthropy needs to take risks, innovate and collaborate.

The conversation also looks at the work the IKEA Foundation has traditionally been doing with refugees in the Global South and, more recently, how IKEA’s commercial operations are supporting refugees from Ukraine in the Global North. Per details the close collaboration between IKEA’s philanthropic and commercial sides.

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