Ukrainian Social Venture Fund and SILab Ukraine represented Ukraine at Impact Days in Malmö

Recently, one of the key events for the European impact community took place in Malmö, Sweden — the annual Impact Week 2025. Malmö has long been a symbol of urban transformation: from a post-industrial port to a center of creativity and sustainable innovation. The event brought together hundreds of investors, social businesses, foundations, municipalities, researchers, and practitioners from across Europe around one strategic question: how capital can shape a more just, resilient, and inclusive economy.

Over the course of three days, participants engaged in discussions and practical formats addressing the most urgent global challenges — climate instability, growing inequality, and the crisis of trust in institutions. This year’s program also featured interactive exhibitions, futuristic installations, international case studies, and open dialogues — all designed to encourage participants to co-create shared responses.

Ukraine at Impact Days was represented by Aliona Kalibaba, CEO of the Ukrainian Social Venture Fund, and Anna Hulevska-Chernysh, Chair of the Board, SILab Ukraine. Both presented the Ukrainian experience, built partnerships with European organizations, and contributed to strategic conversations on impact investing in times of uncertainty.

Anna Gulevska-Chernysh:

“This year’s Impact Week in Malmö felt fundamentally different for me — not in format, but in spirit. Last year in sunny Bilbao, it was an almost relaxed conversation among experts about impact, innovation, and social investments. In snowy Malmö, there was tension and an unspoken question in the air: what will tomorrow bring and how should we respond?

Sweden, though geographically distant from the war, responds to events in Ukraine deeply — almost on a cellular level. Teams, families, even children talk about it. And this was strongly felt in the discussions with Swedish impact funds, companies, and projects: the sector can no longer afford to talk only about ‘traditional’ social impact — it is forced to rethink its role in a new reality.

It is telling that, for the first time in the history of Impact Week, the program included a session on miltech — with a direct and uncomfortable question: can investments in this sector be considered impact today? The world is changing, and with it, the very understanding of impact.

For me, the main outcome of Impact Week is not answers, but complex and ambiguous questions each participant must confront — guided by their values and by the vision of the world they want to live in.

I am truly glad that thanks to SILab Ukraine’s membership in Impact Europe, we can convey Ukraine’s reality to our European colleagues — its challenges and its opportunities for co-creating the future.”

Aliona Kalibaba:

“At Impact Week in Malmö, I joined a workshop on one of the most pressing topics in impact investing today: can defense and dual-use technologies be considered impact investments?

After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the growing defense budgets across Europe, this question is no longer theoretical. For Ukraine, it is especially sensitive: people’s safety, resilience, cybersecurity, countering disinformation, demining — these are not ‘defense for the sake of defense,’ but conditions of survival and recovery.

For us, as an impact fund, this dialogue is important not to erase ‘red lines,’ but rather to clearly define them: where impact is possible, where unacceptable risk begins, and what additional value impact capital can (or cannot) bring into these ‘grey zones.’ It is a difficult conversation — but a necessary one.”

For Ukraine, participation in such forums is a vital space for dialogue and joint work: sharing our daily realities, collaborating with international partners, and seeking systemic solutions for rebuilding not from the fragments of the past, but from a vision for the future.

The partnerships initiated in Malmö are already transforming into concrete projects that will strengthen the impact entrepreneurship ecosystem in Ukraine.