Young Arab Leaders (YAL), the region’s foremost development platform for business, public sector and civil society leaders, recently announced the launch of the ‘Entrepreneurship Initiative’ for 2008-2009.
The Initiative is sponsored by The Dow Chemical Company through its charitable arm, The Dow Chemical Company Foundation, as part of its support for the ‘Arab and American Dialogue Programme’ for 2008 and 2009.
The ‘Entrepreneurship Initiative’ aims to nurture innovation among young, small and medium entrepreneurs in the region and provide them opportunities for training mentoring and networking. Through the programme, they will learn from the experiences of other start-up and early-stage companies in the region and receive mentorship from YAL members.
It will serve as a primary platform whereby small and medium entrepreneurs will be identified, their business plans assessed for capacity building training through a process of mentoring and adopting by more established companies in the region.
Applications for the programme will be invited through an Online Portal, Chapter Announcements and Member and Task Force Nominations. These will be assessed via a selection committee chaired by YAL that will include representatives from ABAN, DIFC Centre of Excellence and Larta, in addition to other members nominated to the Committee by the YAL Regional Office. Selected applicants will then go through the capacity building or the training component of the programme.
YAL and its partners the DIFC CoE and Larta will establish work plans for each of these candidates and they will be assigned a “Mentor” who will ensure that they absorb the exhaustive training. Finally, these candidates will be again assessed by the selection committee. Once satisfied with the progress, candidates may then be eligible for access to funding through ABAN. One complete cycle of the Programme would ideally take about twelve months.
A Pilot Programme will be launched soon as the initial phase of the entrepreneurship initiative; During this phase, select entrepreneurs would be going through the outreach, assessment, training and access to funding of the ‘Entrepreneurship’ programme to prove the adaptability and compatibility of the initiatives’ strategy and working model to diverse scenarios. Entrepreneurs will be selected from diverse sectors in three pilot countries – UAE, Egypt and Jordan.
The Applications for the Pilot will be called for in July 2008 and candidates will be selected to go through the programme from September 2008.