Deadline: 21-Nov-21
The Yunus Environment Hub has launched a 2022 cohort of their GrowUp Incubator for social businesses to support and grow skills on early-stage entrepreneurs who have proven their concept and are looking for support on how to scale their social business and become self-sustainable.
Their GrowUp Incubator focuses on supporting and advancing innovative solutions that have the potential to create substantial environmental and social impact. They’re providing key support to social business entrepreneurs in post-revenue stage. Incubates of GrowUp will receive tailored mentorship based on their needs, interactive capacity building workshops and networking opportunities with local partners and peer-to-peer support to share challenges and discover solutions.
Agriculture and food sector has enormous environmental and social footprint in East Africa as well as it is a proven engine for poverty reduction, with about 80% of the region’s population living in rural areas and depending on it for their livelihood. With their 2022 cohort of GrowUp Incubator they will address East Africa’s transformation towards sustainable food systems to enable sustainable agricultural production and support sustainable practices along the whole food value chain; to mitigate climate change and build resilient communities; to encourage renaissance of rural territories; and to enable availability of nutritious and healthy food for the local population.
At the end, they will have identified how to:
- Refine its partnerships and operational model
- Analyse the product-market fit for multiple contexts
- Find viable routes to scale and grow
- Integrate impact evaluation into the operational model
- Identify financial sustainability model and financial opportunities
Topics
- Processing and Packaging
- Preparation and Consumption
- Disposal and Food Waste Recovery
- Production Growing and Harvesting
- Aggregation, Distribution, Marketing and Sales
Benefits
- Interactive capacity-building bootcamp
- Bi-weekly tailored mentorship
- Capacity building trainings
- Networking opportunities
- Peer-to-peer support
Eligibility Criteria
- The cohort will support social business entrepreneurs in Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Burundi.
- To apply for 2022 cohort, your social business should:
- Be located in one of their target countries in East Africa
- Solve a challenge within one or more thematic areas related to food systems.
- Be beyond experimentation stage
- Have their product/service on the market for 6 months – 3 years
- 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 substantial environmental and social 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)
- Have 2-3 people from the team who will participate in the program
- Have regular access to stable internet to participate in mentoring sessions and cohort events
For more information, visit https://yunusenvironmenthub.com/growup-incubator/