January 2020 was a very busy month for Berytech as it launched two bootcamps part of the Impact Rise social innovation program, one dedicated to the 16 social ventures who joined the program and the other to the 16 experts who will be coaching those startups within the program.
The ‘Scaling for Impact’ bootcamps were both lead by IES Business School Portugal and powered by INSEAD and conducted by local and international experts. Subjects covered were on the impact entrepreneurship field, while the methodologies used were based on seasoned academic research and field research from more than 1000 impact entrepreneurs and startups.
4-day Bootcamp for Social Entrepreneurs
The intensive 4-day program was designed for the 16 selected social entrepreneurs with the aim to grow their ventures and increase their impact. For this bootcamp, Berytech partnered with international experts from the IES-Social Business School – the first business school focused on Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship.
Trainers Carlos Azavedo and Nadine Asmar led the training that was co-designed with the purpose of creating catalysts for a real impact economy. The 16 teams were able to learn and apply an innovative methodology to design and implement a growth plan and to communicate it convincingly to impact investors.
The trainers worked with the startups to linearize their venture’s model in order to grow in a sustainable way, giving them the opportunity to identify their scaling challenges, clarify the innovation that makes their venture unique and make the business model robust and linear around the innovation. Together they worked to design a growth strategy based on the new business model, set clear goals and track them in an efficient way and build the venture’s figures and financial performance indicators. The startups learned how to raise capital effectively and how to pitch to investors according to their profiles.
“Regardless of the situation in the country, the teams were committed to build a scalability plan for their impact ventures during the 4 days. At the end of the program, the impact entrepreneurs achieved to pitch a concrete plan to scale their impact regionally in order to solve societal challenges in different domains such as education, waste management, civic engagement, access to social and local services and improve access to culture and preservation of local culture and heritage. The group was also able to overcome common challenges together and build a strong sense of belonging to an impact community. The motto of this week was – if not us, who? if not now, when? Let’s do it for a better world. Lebanon and the region are in good hands!” cited Carlos.
The startup teams met with an assessment committee including Dolly Choucair, Celine Chaudron and Constantin Salameh, in the presence of the program’s selected coaches. The committee listened to the pitch of each team giving them feedback on what they could improve or change to maximize their impact. The coaches who were present were able to take note of the feedback so they could incorporate it in their work with the startups in the upcoming year.
In a further step to immerse them in the social impact community, startups met with Zeina Saab from Nawaya network who gave her testimonial on founding a social venture and Michelle Mouracade from AlFanar who talked about grant funding.
Meet the startups enrolled in the Impact Rise Program here.
2-day Train the Trainer Bootcamp
Through the Impact Rise program, Berytech is building the capacities for experts from the Lebanese ecosystem ensuring transfer of expertise and tools for the support of startups at the scale up phase. The trained experts, including Coaches and Mentors, become intermediaries and trainers in the future as they will use the know-how acquired from the program to enhance the skills and capacities to other startups from their networks.
For this 2-day training, Berytech also partnered with experts from the IES-Social Business School to empower the 16 business coaches enrolled with concrete tools and methodologies tailored for the support of the social entrepreneurs and their impact ventures. The trained coaches received certifications and were matched with the enrolled social startups to support them in their growth journey.
The training covered the definition of coaching within the Impact Rise Program, basic coaching skills, the impact economy, business remodeling for impact, scaling models, capacity building, financing growth, and setting a roadmap for success.
Nadine Asmar explains that “for two days the batch of coaches were trained on the methodology of ‘how to scale an impact venture’. The motivation of the coaches recruited by the Berytech team was contagious! The group was strongly committed to the impact agenda. The training took place continuously and dynamically, with moments of theoretical exposition and practical application over 10 sequential sessions. It balanced moments of intense teamwork with relaxation, networking and sharing. Each session included the presentation of concepts, models and tools immediately applied by the teams, with support from coaches.”
Marc Aoun founder of Compost Baladi was invited to give a testimonial for the coaches on building his social venture, along with Constantin Salameh, Senior Coach and Investment Advisor at Berytech on his long coaching career.
Meet the coaches enrolled in the Impact Rise program here.
Meet the Scaling for Impact Trainers
Carlos Azavedo is the President of the Board of Directors and CEO at IES-Social Business School. He worked as a research associate at INSEAD and was also a research assistant at the Catolica University in Portugal. He is the former CEO of UDIPSS-PORTO, an umbrella group for more than 500 non-profit organizations in the country. He is the author of several books on Social Innovation. Carlos holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Minho in Portugal. He also teaches the elective course on Social Entrepreneurship at the MBA program of INSEAD in Fontainebleau.
Nadine Asmar is a resilient entrepreneur with an international experience of more than 15 years in business strategy, organizational planning, critical thinking, business acumen and trust-based partnerships management, worked in volatile markets, different industries, on different channels of distribution, with multi-cultural teams, collaborators and partners. A founding member and managing partner of Nadal & BRD-I Group, she is also a coach, lead facilitator and mentor with Mowgli Mentoring program in the MENA region. Moreover, she helps NGOs and private companies establish themselves in Lebanon and build partnership in the region with the private and public sector.
Learn more about the Impact Rise Program here.
