The East Africa Social Business Ecosystem Builders program initiated by YY Ventures and Yunus Centre, aims to increase the capacity of the existing ecosystem builders in East Africa by facilitating access to new knowledge, technical skills, and networks.
Even though East Africa has been the fastest-growing region in recent years, the region’s economic growth is constrained by local challenges such as poor infrastructure, trade and investment barriers, youth unemployment, poverty, and gaps in the education system. In this context, it is crucial to build the ecosystem for the youth to take an entrepreneurial approach and enable the region’s economy to build resilient businesses and communities for the future.
The East Africa Social Business Ecosystem Builders program will support ten (10) social business support organizations by enrolling them in a two-month-long learning journey. Through this program, two young professionals from each selected organization (a total of 20 participants) will attend five workshops across 6 weeks, design their own Social Business support programs with our experts’ coaching and guidance during this time, and apply for a matching fund of up to EUR 25,000 to implement their program activities.
We hope at the end of the program, the 20 participating ecosystem builders will design and implement their own programs, and support early-stage social business entrepreneurs in the region who will create a world of three zeros - zero net carbon emission, zero wealth concentration for ending poverty, and zero unemployment by unleashing entrepreneurship in all.
Image Source: UnicefThe East Africa Social Business Ecosystem Builders program will invite and enroll ten (10) Social Business support organizations in East Africa from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda to participate in a Learning Journey. This will enable them to design, implement, and manage Social Business support programs in their own regions, e.g. Social Business competitions, Social Business incubation/accelerator programs, and Yunus Social Business Centres.
The Learning Journey for Ecosystem Builders aims to collaborate with and upskill East Africa’s ecosystem builders so that they can create a supportive entrepreneurial environment for young people to start and scale-up social businesses. The Learning Journey will help young learners understand the technical know-how on designing and implementing social business support programs through a network of experts so that they can implement local and regional programs in their community. This will motivate young learners to identify social and environmental challenges using the human-centred approach and design sustainable social business models around their innovative solution.
This program creates a space for social business ecosystem builders to accelerate and design impactful social business support programs for young people. The participants can construct their innovation programs with our experts’ coaching and guidance. Overall, our program prepares the participants with different aspects of delivering social business support programs to address existing social and environmental challenges in East Africa.
At the end of the program, a regional forum with 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus will be organized. All participating ecosystem builders will be welcomed at the regional gathering and our global network of Social Business family, which includes microfinance institutions, social business funds, Social Business incubators and Yunus Social Business Centres network across the world.
At the end of the program, participants will be able to pitch for a matching fund (grant of up to EUR 25,000) to implement their social business support programs. Applicant organizations are required to be not-for-profit in nature.
Social Business support organizations, e.g. Yunus Social Business Centres, Incubator/Accelerators, and Enterprise Support Organisations from Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, can nominate up to 2 early-stage professionals who are already involved and engaged with the Social Business ecosystem or want to design, implement and manage Social Business support programs.
