Nigerian Clean Cookng Entrepreneurs Receive Innovative Training to Help Support Business
Entrepreneurs working in Nigeria’s clean cookstoves sector received innovative training at a workshop designed to help them better attract funding and improve their businesses. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC) and the Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI) housed at Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship in partnership with the Nigerian Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and support from Shell Nigeria hosted a program called “Boost” on Monday and Tuesday, October 19-20, 2015. The program designed specifically for early-stage social entrepreneurs helped to prepare clean cookstoves businesses in Nigeria to apply for grants, investments, awards, and develop their capacity.
Entrepreneurs worked through a series of “learning by doing” modules that enabled them to learn concepts while they developed business plan elements specific to their social enterprise. For entrepreneurs in the program, outcomes included higher quality applications to incubators, accelerators, challenges and potential funders as well as identification of gaps in their business model.
The Boost Program is a two day in-person workshop with modules on social impact model, target market and value proposition, marketing, sales and partnerships, financial model, and growth strategy. At the end of the workshop every social entrepreneur presented an executive summary they created using the output of all of the exercises. They were given feedback to enable them to strengthen it and use as their “elevator pitch” to investors and on applications. Using the materials developed by the entrepreneurs, they would be able to access other grant funding and investment opportunities.
To read more about this event, see: https://nigeriacleancooking.org/boosting-clean-cooking-entrepreneurship