YSEI youth entrepreneur fund rolling

For over two years now I’ve been involved in the creation and deployment of a fund that helps youth social entrepreneurs get kick started. It’s called YSEI - Youth Social Enterprise Initiative. YSEI is a high-engagement social venture program for emerging young social entrepreneurs in developing countries and there are several ways you can get involved. Through the Emergence Fellowship , YSEI aims to invest in young visionaries who have big ideas and who need crucial startup support to turn their ideas into action.

The start-up support includes:

• Startup financing up to USD$15,000
• Essential development knowledge & tools on social entrepreneurship
• Technical consulting through mentorship
• Access to diverse networks

A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture that creates social change. Social entrepreneurs are innovative, resourceful, and results oriented individuals who utilize the best of the business, nonprofit and technology worlds to develop innovative solutions that maximize their social impact.

Youth Social Enterprise Initiative (YSEI) believes in providing support to any young person from any developing region with innovative ideas, commitment and vision for social change to emerge as a social entrepreneur and create lasting impact.

YSEI was founded in 2005 as a Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) multi-stakeholder partnership program between its members - TRN, Mitra & OrphanIT. The cofounders and management of YSEI include Sunit Shrestha (Executive Director, TRN), Rahul Nainwal , (Director, Mitra), Simon Healy (Director, OrphanIT) and Sailendra Dev Appanah (TRN Partner).

The Program’s Core Principles

• Build and maintain multi-stakeholder partnerships with academia, civil society, government and the private sector are critical to building strong support networks for young social entrepreneurs
• Reaching out to work with disadvantaged youth, and marginalized and underrepresented groups in society
• Promotion of gender equality and human rights by ending discrimination

Our Board of Advisors

Walter Fust - Director-General, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
Rinalia Abdul Rahim – Executive Director, Global Knowledge Partnership
Michael Chertok – Program Officer, Gates Foundation
Hilmy Ahamed – Managing Director, Young Asia Television

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