Sarvodaya Development Finance

Sarvodaya Development Finance is Sri Lanka’s oldest micro finance institution that among other entrepreneurs, supports farmers in villages across the country, where it maintains branches and easily accessible virtual banking opportunities that typically offer better rates than most other financial institutions.

GLOBAL ACADEMY’s co-founder Walter Link supported Sarvodaya to transform SDF’s predecessor from a loss making NGO into a fast growing and profitable, fully regulated finance institution that is now also quoted on the Colombo stock exchange, whose president called it the country’s first impact finance institution. 

After supporting its pre-IPO search for equity, NOW Partners Foundations’ finance arm, NOW Finance, is currently supporting SDF to raise international loan financing. It also supported SDF to become a member of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values that unites almost 70 financial institutions from around the world that are actively supporting diverse stakeholders in their transition towards more regenerative economies and societies. This includes extensive financing of the transition to agroecology.

GLOBAL ACADEMY, via its co-founder Global Academy Foundation, supports the Sri Lankan micro finance institution Sarvodaya Development Finance to join GABV. NOW Finance’s CEO spent the past 18 years in senior leadership positions at Triodos Bank, Europe’s leading sustainability bank that was a key co-founder of GABV. 

GLOBAL ACADEMY also features GABV leaders in its international events, such as at the UN’s Climate Summits COP 27, COP 28 and COP 29 and plans to do so in the future.

Click here for SDF’s website