Our Youth Entrepreneur Fund Phase 2 Launched

I’m writing this from the launch of Phase 2 of our youth fund (www.ysei.org) in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. We’re holding the launch of the YSEI Fellowships 2008 at the GKP Pavilion at the WCIT 2008 Exhibition Area

The Fellowship recognises the potential of young social entrepreneurs in contributing to socio-economic growth and provide sstart-up support for young social entrepreneurs from developing countries to nurture their innovative ideas.

YSEI Asia Fellowship 2008 will provide support for 10 Fellows with a seed funding totalling USD125,000, on-site mentorship, essential development knowledge and tools on social entrepreneurship as well as access to diverse networks.

Twenty candidates have been shortlisted through an online competition for the Fellowships this year. We’ll be posting a full Podcast of the week’s events shortly.

Our other Tandem event being held this week in KL - The Tigers’ Lair: “Social Entrepreneurs Pitch for Scale-up Funding”

Enter the Tigers’ Lair pits 4 entrepreneurs in a high-profiled contest to bid for funding to grow their social enterprises.

The contestants are young social entrepreneurs based in developing countries, who believe that their enterprises are viable and will offer high potential for returns.

Each will have a one-time opportunity to pitch their business plans to the ‘Tigers’ – a panel of 4 successful entrepreneurs and funders.

The winner must pass the Tigers’ probe in order to be considered for funding, business advice, mentorship, and global networking opportunities.

The pitchers are all part of the YSEI fellowship. We have two of our ’superstars’ fromlast year and two new potential stars getting upon stage

Raj Ridvan Singh - International Director & Co-founder of Science of Life System 24/7 (SOLS 24/7)

SOLS 24/7 provides holistic life-skills education and boarding to underprivileged youth especially girls. SOLS 24/7’s mission is to develop as many youth as possible to become skilled, responsible, dynamic, disciplined, compassionate and socially-conscious to provide them with the necessary support to secure job placements or start their own businesses. Part-time students are charged a nominal fee for revenue generation.

Marielle Nadal- Co-Founder, and currently Executive Director of Idea!s Creatives

Idea!s is a youth-led social enterprise based in the Philippines. Idea!s uses the power of creative communications to enhance the outreach, impact and fundraising efforts of organisations with social objectives, thereby allowing them to touch and transform the lives of more people. Revenue comes from regular and reduced rates for private corporations and non-profit organisations, respectively.

Urjana Shrestha - Founder of Fair-Trade Crafts

Fair-trade Crafts from Nepal is a business model that creates employment opportunities and promotes traditional craftmanship talents to global markets. The enterprise aims to provide job opporturnities for some of the country’s most disadvantaged people by promoting their traditional crafts to the international market and providing them with good value of their work, which will in turn help sustain their talents, reduce poverty and advance community development.

Jamil Goheer-Founder of Cultural Classics

Cultural Classics (CC) is a platform that gives voice to artisans and their spectacular creations from rural and backward areas. CC contributes towards economic empowerment of under privileged community of skillful artisans while creating opportunities for them in these economically disadvantaged areas of the world. CC is determined to leverage the lifestyles of the artisans and share their information through their web portal all over the globe. CC exports these handicrafts in bulk to buyers worldwide.