Social entrepreneurship offers not only a path for young people to transform their own lives, but also a way to empower others. We believe that young social entrepreneurs have a key role to play in contributing to the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They are increasingly using innovative business approaches to respond to today’s challenges and tomorrow’s problems.
However, social entrepreneurs need a favorable and enabling business ecosystem to thrive and to bring their impact to scale. These entrepreneurial ecosystems require the collaboration of different stakeholders as well as specific interventions and programmes supporting innovations to scale particularly in the rapidly growing area of social entrepreneurship.
Supporting young social entrepreneurs is at the heart of both ITC’s Youth and Trade Programme and the Impact Hub network. Since 2016, ITC and Accelerate2030 have been collaborating to offer selected ventures expertise, advisory and global visibility. In the context of ITC’s annual World Export Development Forum (WEDF), A2030 ventures had the opportunity to pitch for investments into their business.
Following a joint ITC/A2030 event during the UNGA in New York in September 2018, the Youth and Trade programme and Accelerate2030 are keen to strengthen the current collaboration to further support impact-driven entrepreneurs from developing countries that contributes in achieving SDGs.
Building on the lessons learnt from the current collaboration and considering the resources and expertise ITC and A2030 can bring to targeted entrepreneurs, three main objectives of the forthcoming collaboration have been established:
- Enhance the capacity of young social entrepreneurs to scale their impact through a targeted scale-readiness programme across 15+ countries and an international scaling programme.
- Strengthen the methodology and the capacity of national implementing partners (Impact Hubs) to provide support to entrepreneurs to scale their impact internationally.
- Improve the business environment for young social entrepreneurs in their respective countries.
- Deploy the learning content to other partners and young entrepreneurs to showcase the importance of social entrepreneurship as a good driver to achieve SDGs

A direct impact of this initiative will be on fostering employment and revenue generation for young social entrepreneurs in the corresponding countries of the programme. It will also improve access to investment and generate role models for younger generations. By making these young social entrepreneurs more competitive and visible, there is also a direct contribution to the SDGs in their respective field of intervention and it can inspire, on the longer term, other young people to follow their paths.