Real Impact – Quaker Finance for Ecological Justice
Quaker Earthcare Witness invites Friends into a “call to integrity” regarding our financial stewardship. As the climate emergency accelerates, many Quaker institutions and individuals rely on “ethical” investing or ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) screenings to align their money with their values.
But is this enough? In this hard-hitting session, we move beyond traditional engagement to explore why prevailing financial approaches often deliver “zero impact” for the climate transition. We will look honestly at the structural limits of the current system and discern how we can pivot our resources toward tangible, regenerative solutions that honor the Quaker Statement on Climate Change.
What We Will Explore:
- The “Unblinding”: Exposing the Secondary Market “Scam” – Why trading stocks in a diseased economy often serves as a reputational hedge rather than a real lever for change. Divestment often only solves half the problem.
- The Structural Limits of ESG – An examination of why ethical screenings frequently fail to remove major fossil fuel financiers from our portfolios.
- Prophetic Investment & Real Asset Investing (RAI) – Instead of going with the flow of traditional investing in a diseased system, we will present a vision for moving resources directly into real-world projects like renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, and life-saving healthcare – outside the stock market all together. Real communities. Real impact.
- From Talk to Action – Addressing the uncomfortable reality that Quaker institutions still invest billions in sectors driving ecological destruction, and how to reclaim our witness through direct-impact finance.
This webinar is presented by Quaker Earthcare Witness and the Applied Economy (R)Evolution Institute (AEEI). The AEEI is a systemic change organization dedicated to redesigning the financial system so that it serves life and ecological integrity. They focus on moving capital away from speculative secondary markets and into “real-asset investing,” which funds tangible solutions for the climate crisis and social justice.
Guest Speakers: Vit Mateju and Arne Springorum from the Applied Economy (R)Evolution Insitute
Arne Springorum is a Quaker and co-founder at AEEI and a prominent activist-entrepreneur who works to align large-scale economic systems with planetary boundaries. With deep roots in European climate activism, he focuses on practical, direct-impact investment strategies that bypass the traditional stock market.
Vit Mateju is the co-founder of AEEI and an expert in systemic financial transformation with decades of experience as a traditional finance professional and a background in designing alternative economic models. Having seen the finance world from the inside, he is deeply committed to “truth-telling”, specifically critiquing how traditional investment structures often fail to create the real-world impact they claim to support.