Our client: British Council, the United Kingdom’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities
Duration: 12 months (2019-2020)
Final beneficiaries: 50 youth (aged between 18-35) from Egypt working in leadership positions at social enterprises, including some in the creative industries
The challenge
Developing Inclusive and Creative Economies (DICE) is a pilot programme that takes a holistic approach to addressing entrenched issues of economic and social exclusion.
Through the collaboration of one UK organisation and one organisation from one of 6 countries, the intent is to co-design and co-deliver interventions that support the development of creative and social enterprises that specifically aim to:
- empower women and girls;
- foster youth employment; and/or
- promote the inclusion and economic empowerment of disabled people or other marginalised groups.
Our solution
To support youth from Egypt working in leadership positions at social enterprises, including some in the creative industries, through our collaborative programme with ElRehla of a retreat camp. The youth will be sourced from Cairo, Alexandria, as well as various governorates outside these areas to ensure inclusivity. Following the camp, ElRehla and The Impact Collective designed and ran 3 workshops for 3 target audiences that will support the further group of the ecosystem as a whole on a systemic level.
Our objective was to lead a nationwide initiative around impact investing in Egypt, so that is why we developed this project focused on social entrepreneurship and investment to support this need. Within this mission of developing an impact investing ecosystem is the need to develop the pipeline of impact entrepreneurs – which was the focus of the first intervention of the retreat. It is a crucial part for the rest of the ecosystem parts to strengthen the whole chain / bigger picture as impact investors often do not find investment-ready social enterprises.
The result
Throughout this year we were able to create a platform for social entrepreneurship and impact investing. We were able to support the pipeline of impact entrepreneurs which was the focus of our Public Camp then followed by three deeper roundtable discussions with entrepreneurs, Investors and corporates to create a tangible platform where these stakeholders can share their perspectives around impact investing in the local and global practices.
The achievements of this project was developing the impact ecosystem in Egypt through the following methods and achievements of each:
“Leading with Purpose” Impact Retreat: Brought together all key players of the impact ecosystem: youth and women lead social and creative enterprises, impact investors, beneficiaries for a connective, reflective and habit changing experience.
We designed the public camp around the idea of creating social change and impactful enterprises, where 84 of participants got the chance to share their experiences and create collaborations with other attendees.
Then we held three workshops with three different types of stakeholders in the area of impact investment.
- Impact Investment Workshop: Sparked the conversation on what impact investments are, why are they profitable, how to approach the impact investment market; Attended by more than 52 attendees from different investment backgrounds that enriched the conversation about the different practices in Egypt.
- Impact for Corporate Workshop: Promoted a more active usage of impact businesses in large corporates supply chains, as well as, to exploring how to best leverage on the CSR activities to be more inclusive for creative and social businesses; We found a good response from corporates to participate in this discussion, around 40 attendees from some of the big organizations attended. The round table discussion was followed by a breakout groups where we presented four success stories that succeeded in the usage of impact businesses in corporates.
- ToT Impact Workshop: Targeted impact businesses and consultancies to explore how to best empower the businesses impact throughout their operations, how to track it best and how to use storytelling to acquire more customers and scale their businesses.
Our big achievement was in the huge interest that we found from different attendees in participating in these workshops and enriching the discussion: We planned to host 25 attendees in each workshop and we ended up hosting about double the number in each workshop.
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