Green Entrepreneurs Can Win Business Support Package (SEED Awards)

Innovative and inspiring social and environmental entrepreneurs can win a tailor-made support package to help expand their business, as part of the 2013 SEED Awards, which opened last month.

The SEED Awards aim to develop the most promising social and environmental start-up enterprises in emerging economies, developing and least developed countries.

SEED Award winners receive expert advice on developing their business plans, take part in specially-designed workshops to enhance their skills, and benefit from high-level profiling of their enterprises through an international network of businesses,
governments and development institutions.

SEED are seeking entries from innovative start-up entrepreneurs who aim to generate environmental, social and economic benefits at the local level in a country with a developing or emerging economy.

This year SEED will make available up to:

• 15 SEED Awards to enterprises in Ethiopia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Uganda;
• 5 SEED Awards for enterprises in South Africa;
• 3 SEED Awards for South African enterprises in the provinces of Free State, Limpopo and KwaZulu Natal;
• 10 SEED Low Carbon Awards for enterprises in Colombia, India, Tanzania, Uganda and Viet Nam;
• 2 SEED Gender Equality Awards, for enterprises in other countries (except countries that are OECD or EU members).

Candidates can apply until, and no later than, 12 June 2013, 23:59 CET.

SEED Award Winners in the previous round of SEED Awards in 2011 included enterprises that transformed groundnut shells into fuel briquettes in The Gambia; developed solar ovens in Burkina Faso; trained and employed street youth to collect waste materials in Ghana, which they then transformed into handmade designer products;; and employed women to produce aloe-based skin care products in Kenya. The gender equality prize was won by a women's environment committee, supported by the local municipality, which organised waste collection and recycling in Nepal.

Details about these and other SEED Winners are at www.seedinit.org.

Source: SEED Awards