Transform Your Community with Entrepreneur Launchpad
Entrepreneurship is at the heart of many communities and is often the best way for a person to quickly improve their own livelihood. Entrepreneurs are also able to create jobs and income for other people in their communities.
Funzi’s Entrepreneur Launchpad is a guided and globally successful programme that you can use to fully equip a group of new entrepreneurs in less than two months. At the end of the Entrepreneur Launchpad programme, each learner will have a concrete business plan, will know how to execute it, and will even get a chance to pitch it to others. Funzi will give you all the tools, materials, and training you will need for visible success.
This article will walk you through what the Entrepreneur Launchpad includes and showcases a couple of highlights from the past.
Programme structure and timeline
Funzi’s Entrepreneur Launchpad contains:
Access to Funzi’s mobile course on entrepreneurship for your chosen group of learners
Training and tools so your organisation can confidently implement the programme
An intuitive reporting dashboard so you can track your learners’ mobile course learning progress
The programme is designed to take about 8 weeks to complete, according to this timeline:
Planning phase (2 weeks)
Your organisation identifies a location and a target group of learners for the programme and coordinates with Funzi about setting everything up.
Programme execution (6 weeks)
Learners study the Founder 101: Become a successful entrepreneur mobile course and attend weekly training sessions facilitated by your organisation. Each week focuses on one specific topic in the mobile course:
Week 1 - The Founder
The right entrepreneurial mindset and skill set of a successful entrepreneur
Week 2 - The Inventor
Identifying and developing ideas
Solving customers’ problems by developing the right products or services
Prototyping and testing
Creating a Business Model Canvas
Week 3 - The Salesman
Storytelling
Pitching
Other communication skills
Sales and marketing strategy
Week 4 - The Manager
Different forms of enterprise, what they mean for organising ownership and funding of a company, and choosing the right form of enterprise to best fit the entrepreneur’s vision
Week 5 - The Banker
Managing costs
Basic reporting requirements
Understanding funding opportunities in different growth stages
Week 6 - The Leader
Building company culture
Hiring the right employees
Leading and motivating your employees
Resolving conflict in the workplace
Continuous assessment
Learners are assessed through a combination of mobile course activities, on-site session tasks, and the Business Model Canvas. Your organisation keeps track of the learners’ completed on-site tasks, and Funzi provides access to an online reporting dashboard to track their mobile course learning progress.
Certification and business pitching
If you choose to, your organisation can host a graduation ceremony where the new entrepreneurs can pitch their business plans to an audience and are awarded their certificates.
Highlights from the past
The Promise Hub in Nakivale refugee settlement in Uganda partnered with Funzi and implemented entrepreneurship training.
Mashup Community Development ran the programme with Funzi already in 2015-2017 in two locations: in the Westbury and Orange Farm community centres in South Africa. The programme resulted in 11 new businesses!
International Trade Centre (ITC) and Zimba Women, an association aiming at empowering Ugandan women through tech, offered the programme to 35 women with positive results. Subsequently, having seen the first programme's effectiveness, both organisations pursued independent programmes.
