This past July, President of GBF, Holly Chang, traveled to Peterhof, Russia to attend The Emerging Societies – Emerging Philanthropies International Forum.

This was a unique invitation-only event, which brought together leading philanthropy practitioners from Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the South East Asian, African and Arab regions. The overall goal of the forum was to stimulate mutual learning and debate among philanthropists and foundation practitioners, and to provide a platform for future cooperation and peer exchange.

Over the course of two days, there were informal gatherings and interactive discussions among participants. Discussions centered around themes such as: how social change is understood and could be achieved in emerging societies; where relations between governments and philanthropists could lead; how challenge of sustaining philanthropy beyond first generations of donors are met in different giving cultures and how philanthropic values are communicated in different societies.

The Golden Bridges Foundation was a part of the original working group that formed out of a meeting of the trustees of the Philanthropy Bridge Foundation (PBF) in January 2012. PBF was set up to promote philanthropy in emerging markets and worked to co-ordinate, on a global level, collaboration, partnership and thought leadership across philanthropy practitioners in the emerging world. Other members of this group included a number of international organizations including; The Vladimir Potanin Foundation (Russia), The Dmitry Zimin Dynasty Foundation (Russia), CAF Russia, Russian Donors Forum, Dasra (India), Institute for the Development of Social Investment – IDIS (Brazil), The Global Fund for Community Foundations – GFCF (South Africa), The Sun Culture Foundation (China), and The John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement (Egypt).