Impact Pioneers ’24: Enabling Impact Entrepreneurship Leadership Programme

Impact Pioneers’24 seeks to strengthen leaders and enablers working in organizations and networks that want to promote the nurture and growth of local impact entrepreneurship. The programme aims to grow participant’s skill set through exchange of experiences, perspectives, cases, tools and frameworks. A central component of the programme is also networking across an international cohort of peers and with the Swedish impact entrepreneurship ecosystem. This component is key, as is the programme hopes to plant seeds for future partnerships, to the benefit of impact startups and scaleups as they seek to expand their growth, reach and overall impact.

The long term programme objective is connected the SDG 8, target 8.3, which includes promotion of activities and policies that support entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation to encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium sized enterprises, ultimately contributing to job creation and sustainable economic, social and environmental development.

Benefits

• Impact Pioneers offers participants the opportunity to:
  • Grow from the exchange of experiences with an international community of peers.
  • Be supported and inspired by new insights from the Impact entrepreneurship and Impact innovation forefront, such as practical cases, tools and frameworks.
  • Get first-hand experience of the Impact entrepreneurship community in Stockholm, recognised as one of the leading ecosystems in the impact entrepreneurship domain.
  • Build long-term relations with Swedish foreign missions and Swedish Impact entrepreneurs that seek to expand their international reach, growth and impact.

Programme Structure and Format

• Commitment and expectations
• Impact Pioneers is scheduled to run across eight weeks, from late August through October 2024. A final schedule and timeline will be provided upon acceptance to the programme.
  • Participants should be prepared to spend around two hours per week in online activities such as participating in sharing sessions and working an idea for a collaboration project.
  • As a participant, you should also be able to join the one week summit onsite in Stockholm in October.
• Participation in Impact Pioneers is free of charge. The Swedish institute arranges and covers costs related to:
  • Learning programme
  • Flights to and from Sweden for the Sweden week onsite visit
  • Accommodation, meals, transportation and insurance while in Sweden

Who can apply?

• The application is open to entrepreneurship ecosystem leaders and practitioners who work in organizations and networks that want to develop their support for entrepreneurs with businesses related to sustainability and green transition. More specifially, they imagine applicants to work as:
  • Startup hub/accelerator/incubation founders and managers
  • Tech and innovation hub founders and managers
  • University accelerator/incubator managers
• The application is open to 22 programme countries (applicants must be a citizen and resident of one of them):
  • AFRICA: Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia
  • ASIA: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam
  • EUROPE: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicants must meet the following requirements:
  • Be a citizen and resident of one of the 22 programme countries
  • Work in an organisation or business systematically working to nurture and grow entrepreneurs.
  • Have the mandate to develop new international partnerships for your organisation/business.
  • Have a good working knowledge of both written and spoken English.
  • Be willing to actively participate, provide support and share their experience and knowledge with other participants.
  • Have identified opportunities and challenges that could be worked on during the programme to help their organisation improve its contribution to the local entrepreneurship ecosystem
• An applicant’s home organisation/business must also meet the following requirements:
  • Be locally owned and based in one of the programme countries.
  • Be somehow hosting/coaching (or be in the process of starting up hosting/coaching of) entrepreneurs with business ideas that are related to sustainability and green transition.
  • Run the organization/business with focus on contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals.

For more information, visit Swedish Institute.