Deadline: 10-Oct-21
Are you a young person with an idea for how to tackle water and sanitation problems in Bangladesh? If yes, then apply for Young Water Fellowship.
The Young Water Fellowship empowers young leaders to become social entrepreneurs, providing solutions to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) issues in their communities.
YGAP Bangladesh has partnered up with Young Water Solutions to launch the first edition of their flagship Young Water Fellowship program in Bangladesh. The program works with young leaders and their teams to develop new or existing social businesses that improve social or environmental conditions, mainstream gender equality and reduce youth unemployment at the local level, whilst addressing SDG #6: clean water and sanitation for all. The program offers participants a year of support consisting of training, funding for their initiatives and continuous mentoring from subject-matter experts during the implementation of a pilot project.
Funding Information
- 2 intensive bootcamps on WASH and business sustainability
- 7-10 entrepreneurs
- Opportunity for funding of up to €5,000
Benefits
- World Class Training: This program will provide two week-long bootcamps for entrepreneurs to receive intensive training on business sustainability and WASH from entrepreneurship + WASH experts.
- Tailored Mentorship: Each entrepreneur and their team has unique needs and requirements to discover their full potential. Led by subject-matter experts, the program will deliver tailored coaching and mentoring based on the specific needs of the entrepreneurs.
- Assistance in Establishing MVP: Between the bootcamps, participating start-ups will receive monetary assistance to test hypotheses about the technicalities of their product by prototyping their solution and/or to validate the demand for their service.
- Connect with the Ecosystem: Fellows will be integrated into the growing ecosystem for WASH entrepreneurship in Bangladesh and be able to meet key stakeholders at YWF events.
- Access the Global WASH Start-up Network: This program will open the door for Fellows to connect with relevant global organisations and other Fellows around the world, as well as funding opportunities to further develop their WASH initiative and impact more lives!
Eligibility Criteria
- You should be 18 to 30 years old at the time of the application. Although other members of your team may be over 30 years old.
- You should be the founder or co-founder of an initiative that contributes to the solution of a water, sanitation, or hygiene problem in your country.
- The initiative should be in its planning or initial stages. It must have the ability to be turned into a social business (i.e. have a long-term sustainability component or business model). The initiative can either already be a social enterprise, or a project with a sustainability component that will allow it to continue running in the long-term. Traditional and limited in time projects are also accepted. But the applicants should be willing to turn them into a social enterprise during the training and adding elements that will make the initiatives self-sustainable.
- The Young Water Fellow should have the intend to stay in Bangladesh for at least 1.5 years after the training and spend at least 15 hours per week to work on his /her social business.
- It is mandatory for the fellows to attend two bootcamps of one week in November 2021 and February 2022* (exact dates to be confirmed).
- The Young Water Fellow should have at least an intermediate knowledge of English, meaning that you are able to understand and express opinions in this language. The bootcamps will be held in English. Therefore, if you work as part of a team, it may be worthwhile to put forward an English-speaking team member to be the Fellow.
- It is not a requirement that your business is already registered or has started operations.
For more information, visit https://ywfbd.org/?fbclid=IwAR3ofsaHd5QnuHj_0-d5w-JBeWRtZIO35POm1yFmXBlvoK7OgxSYPIEWAIo