The yher Pacific Islands Program 2020 for Female Entrepreneurs

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The yher Pacific Islands Program is a powerful opportunity for passionate Female Entrepreneurs who are at the early stages of building businesses that exist to improve the lives of people living in poverty across the Pacific Islands region.

yher supports game-changing, women-led impact ventures that are improving the lives of people living in poverty across the Pacific Islands region. Their program provides the region’s most promising women entrepreneurs with access to the skills, knowledge, connections, funding, and community they need to build sustainable and scalable ventures. It has been designed and is delivered by women entrepreneurs, for women entrepreneurs. yher leverages ygap’s proven model which has been developed by running over 45 programs and supporting more than 515 impact ventures globally. It has now been contextualized to meet the specific needs of our Pacific Islands women trailblazers.

The yher program is also being delivered across Africa. Their exclusive accelerator program aims to back female-led impact ventures across the Pacific Islands.

The program runs in a number of stages:

Accelerate
You will begin your yher program journey by attending a one-week immersive ‘accelerator’ experience in Fiji. Here, you will meet like-minded women entrepreneurs from across the region and together go through an intensive week of training. This presents a unique opportunity for you to step out of the day to day activities of your business, and spend a full week working and reflecting on your business as well as focusing on yourself as a leader. By the end of the week, two entrepreneurs will also have been awarded funding. Your accelerator journey will be facilitated and supported by our local team as well as one of our global facilitators, all who are women entrepreneurs and are invested in seeing you succeed.
Support
After having spent a week deep-diving your business under the palms of Fiji, you will return home energized and ready to start implementing your newly acquired ideas and insights. The yher team will continue to be there to support you. For 6 months, you will have access to monthly coaching calls, small grants, resources, connections and more.
Growth
And that’s not all. At the end of the support phase, they will work with the entrepreneurs who have made the most progress and have been the most engaged and proactive to apply for further funding from ygap.

Location:

Fiji

Benefits

They do require successful applicants to fund their own travel (flights) to Fiji for the one-week live-in accelerator program, from their home location. All accommodation and food costs whilst in Fiji, during the program, will be covered by ygap
A total of $10,000 AUD in prize funding is awarded at the High Tea event to the winners of their peer review and audience votes.
An additional $40,000 AUD total in grant funding or investment will be awarded at the end of the 6-month program between the two most promising ventures.
You will also get access to ygap’s global community, as well as the yher Pacific Islands network of mentors and partners
The week-long training, we provide your venture with six months of business support, tailored mentorship opportunities, perks from our partners, and access to small grants of up to $1,000 AUD.
End of the week-long program, they’ll gather for an exclusive, invite-only high tea event giving you the opportunity to network with key players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and share your venture.

Eligibilities

Female-Led Ventures: You must have at least one female co-founder who will participate in the program.
Local: You intimately understand the problem that you are trying to solve in your community.
Social Impact: Your venture must exist to improve the lives of people living in poverty and align with one or more of the Global Sustainable Development Goals.
Support Women and Girls: They prefer ventures that have a clear mandate or mission to uplift women and girls in some way, however, this is not required.
In the Early Stages: You will have already fully developed, tested or launched your venture and can demonstrate early traction or proof of concept. Your intervention should be innovative and unique, and will typically have been in operation less than two years.

Eligible Regions: Pacific Islands and Africa