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GrowUp Incubator for green Social Businesses:
Improving Waste Management
We are launching our GrowUp Incubator for green Social Businesses to support and grow skills on early-stage entrepreneurs that have proven their concept and are looking for support on how to scale their social business and become self-sustainable.
The program will support social business entrepreneurs in Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Burundi and will be running three cohorts between 2021 and 2023: The 2021 cohort will focus on solutions for waste management.
During the 6-month program, the green Social Business entrepreneur will receive:
- Bi–weekly tailored mentorship based on their needs (partnerships, operational model, financial sustainability model, product-market fit, routes to scale and grow, impact evaluation, etc)
- Five interactive capacity-building workshops
- Five networking events with local partners and peer-to-peer support
To apply, your social business should:
- Solve a challenge in the waste management sector
- Have their product/service on the market for 6 months – 3 years
- Be beyond experimentation stage
- Be legally registered or planning on doing it during the incubation program
- Be led by a person or by the community (cooperative model)
- Be able to demonstrate social and environmental impact
- Be in pre-seed investment but post-revenue stage
- Have accumulated sales to date of approx. 10,000 – 25,000 USD (Not necessarily profitable yet)
Timeline
- 08 February – 21 March 2021: Open call for applications
- 11 April 2021: Announcement of 25 semi-finalists
- 16 April – 18 April 2021: Capacity building workshop for 25 semi-finalists
- 19 April 2021: Announcement of 10 selected Social Businesses
- 10 May – 01 October 2021: Tailored mentorship, workshops, networking opportunities for 10 Social Businesses
- 07 October 2021: Demo-Day
If you have any questions regarding the program or if you are interested in becoming a mentor or participant for the following cohorts in 2022 and 2023 you can reach out to Anna Khudiiash – Anna.Khudiiash@yunuseh.com or Katerin Carrillo – Kate.Carrillo@yunuseh.com
More detailed information has been shared in our info session for the 2021 cohort which you can watch below:
GrowUp Bootcamp
From Friday, April 16th through Sunday, April 18th, we hosted our virtual GrowUp Incubator Bootcamp with 25 pre-selected social businesses improving waste management in East Africa.
During the bootcamp the teams received capacity building through interactive workshops, peer-to-peer feedback as well as exchange with well-established social business entrepreneurs in the waste sector. A pool of facilitators and speakers offered their valuable experience and insights to the social business entrepreneurs.
At the end of the bootcamp all 25 teams pitched their social businesses and 10 teams were selected to be part of our 6-month GrowUp incubator program going forward.
Thank you to all participants who made this weekend an unforgettable experience!
