{"id":11012,"date":"2021-10-31T11:59:30","date_gmt":"2021-10-31T11:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.impacc.org\/?p=11012"},"modified":"2023-09-25T13:33:57","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T13:33:57","slug":"new-cohort-of-social-ventures-soon-to-be-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/new-cohort-of-social-ventures-soon-to-be-announced\/","title":{"rendered":"New Cohort of Social Start-ups Soon to Be Announced"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_0 et_pb_gutters2\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_4_4 et_pb_column_0 et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough et-last-child\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_with_border et_pb_module et_pb_text et_pb_text_0 et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_text_inner\">\n<p>When Jochen and I founded Impacc almost two years ago, we wanted to rethink development aid and use the tools of business for social change. We wanted to create a movement that not only combats poverty in Africa, but also attracts and inspires like-minded people. We certainly haven\u2019t achieved that yet, but there are always moments when I think: this is how it\u2019s meant to be.<\/p>\n<p>One such moment was when Clarissa Meyer contacted us a few months ago after listening to a podcast I did. A consultant at the auditing and consulting company KPMG, she had planned a sabbatical and offered to support us free of charge. She ended up travelling across East Africa for a month together with our Head of Operations, Lynn, doing due diligence of the companies that made it to the last round of our recent call for entrepreneurs. They took a close look at the companies on site, met the founders, team, customers and suppliers, had the local production processes explained live on site and tested the products.<\/p>\n<p>The journey took them<br \/>\n\u2026 to a lively market amongst chicken and negotiating customers in Aram, Siaya County, where local potato sellers were able to report on the price stability and quality of directly marketed products.<br \/>\n\u2026 to the Kenyan coast to see the 100% natural oil extraction process by sunlight in the coconut stronghold of Kaloleni.<br \/>\n\u2026 into a quarter of Nairobi where a start-up is establishing clothing collections in containers in order to locally revalue and upgrade textile waste.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"et_pb_image_wrap \"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4247\" title=\"M-Shamba\" src=\"https:\/\/impacc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/M-Shamba.jpg\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) 899px, 100vw\" srcset=\"https:\/\/impacc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/M-Shamba.jpg 899w, https:\/\/impacc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/M-Shamba-480x293.jpg 480w\" alt=\"Participants at first Impacc stove training\" width=\"auto\" height=\"auto\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Over the next two or three weeks, we will work with African experts to select the top 5 to add to our portfolio. But we can already say that our hopes have been confirmed: there are great entrepreneurs with functioning business ideas who are creating sustainable jobs in areas of extreme poverty and who all have the same problem: they cannot get funding because they can\u2019t get or repay traditional bank loans and are not profitable enough for investors.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve got next year\u2019s work cut out for us: raise funds for our new partners and help them turn their ideas into flourishing businesses and job engines. And even if Clarissa is now returning to her original job: her work (just like the pro bono support from Allianz Consulting in the initial selection of the ventures) has helped us identify, amongst countless applications, those few ideas that can really create markets for the poorest of the poor \u2013 because that\u2019s what Impacc is all about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Jochen and I founded Impacc almost two years ago, we wanted to rethink development aid and use the tools of business for social change. We wanted to create a movement that not only combats poverty in Africa, but also attracts and inspires like-minded people. We certainly haven\u2019t achieved that yet, but there are always [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-impacc-portfolio","category-start-ups"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11012"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11698,"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11012\/revisions\/11698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impacc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}