‘Innovate, Incubate & Grow’ (IIG) programme was a two and a half month long journey that started with a call of competition on innovative social enterprise idea. A number of 171 youths from across the country participated with 57 innovative social enterprise ideas in the competition. Among them, ten enterprise ideas were selected by a panel of judges and were invited to join in a boot camp held from 10 to 15 February 2016 in the Hope Centre, Savar, Dhaka.
In the boot camp, participants were oriented about the detail concepts, processes, and approaches of social enterprise. In the camp, participants were also asked to articulate their ideas. After that, they participated in another patching process to qualify for the final stage. Throughout all the processes of the boot camp, ideas of six teams came up successfully and they were invited to the business planning workshop.
The ‘Social Enterprise Business Planning Workshop’ was a three day program held from 7 to 9 March 2016 in Dhaka. It was designed to explore how learners can measure and report on social impact, form partnerships and collaborate to carry out the plan. The objectives of the ‘Social Enterprise Business Planning Workshop’ were to plan the marketing of their social enterprises, plan income and finance approaches for their social enterprise, understand the principles underlying social measurement and understand the benefits of working together and collaboration.
The winning ideas were: ensuring organic food for the nation, raising awareness about child abuse in Bangladesh, planting on rooftops in every area of the city, creating a marketplace for fruits and vegetables free of chemicals and pesticides, establishing a book centre in Sylhet, empowering workers of the tea gardens by creating an alternative income generating activities. The workshop was the second intervention under the ‘Innovate, Incubate & Grow (IIG): A Social Enterprise Support Program’ of the British Council.