Entrepreneurship at the margins – Business accelerator programme for those working with refugees and migrants

​I was fortunate to take part in a recent 6-month accelerator programme run by the Miller Center at Santa Clara University in California.  The accelerator programme offered a series of online learning modules that encouraged entrepreneurs to clarify their business and impact model, their financial models and marketing and customer segmentation strategy.  The online learning was accompanied by weekly calls with experienced mentors and culminated in a 5 day in-person residence programme in October.  During the residency, entrepreneurs were able to present their project to seasoned entrepreneurs, funders and development professionals and were rigorously ‘tested’ on their model.  Finally, each entrepreneur was able to ‘pitch’ their project to an audience of 150 investors at SOCAP, the Social Capital Markets conference held in San Francisco.
 
It was an exciting and exhilarating time for me, a rare opportunity to step out of the day to day running of the organisation to reflect on the most efficient way for us to grow our model.  We are committed to empowering the next generation of migrant and refugee leadership to grow our work into 5 new countries in the next 3 years and have an ambitious programme to also develop a handbook and online training tools to grow not just our own work but to enable others to benefit from our experience and the models we have developed too.  We are also looking to better understand our impact through the applications of ‘lean data’ collection and hope to recruit someone to manage this and improve our digital storytelling around our impact.
 
Our earned-income programmes have helped to support between 30 and 50% of our income in any given year and we are keen to continue this growth through the development of new and innovative corporate training programmes, educational programmes for children and online learning.  We are also keen to develop the technology around how to deliver our workshops at scale, following the successful pilot of a project using Skype to deliver our workshops to women and children trapped in besieged parts of Syria.
 
We have an ambitious goal to raise US$3 million for the expansion of our programmes and would love to hear from you if you are keen to be part of our journey!
 
For more information about our business plan, please see the link below for an excerpt of the pitch I did at SOCAP.
 
Will you help us be part of a movement in using theatre for social change, bringing a more inspired approach to the empowerment of humanity’s full potential?