SYNERGY: Better Education means Better Sharing
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Impact: What is the impact of the work to date? Also describe the projected future impact for the coming years.
Spread Strategies: Moving forward, what are the main strategies for scaling impact?
Financial Sustainability Plan: What is this solution’s plan to ensure financial sustainability?
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Founding Story
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No Poverty, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Responsible Consumption and Production.
Following my initial work with the Chinese government in Sichuan, I began to wonder what a group of people could achieve with a similar commitment to making international relationships work. Returning to the UK, I founded IDEAS, a Society at my then-university (UCL) which stands for ‘the Society for International Development and Emerging economic Advance’: its core ethos is to think-tank and then launch large-scale, socially entrepreneurial businesses.
Through IDEAS, we have also launched projects in Myanmar and Nepal, the former focused on empowering local entrepreneurs, and the latter on improving disaster resiliency.
The vision of My/Go, the former project, is to fundamentally empower local and aspiring Burmese entrepreneurs to take advantage of the technological tools available to businesses in our digital era, through a tailored course of technology for business.
We have created a hub in Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar, which will provide Burmese start-ups with access to computers and online connectivity: this is called ‘HOME’ (the Hub of Modern Entrepreneurialism). We are currently seeking to equip the My/Go hub with refurbished computers. The unique feature we are building into this, however, is that each computer we send to Myanmar will come preloaded with a comprehensive 25-module course in entrepreneurialism and business skills, created by experts at University College London.
All Burmese entrepreneurs who join My/Go will take a customised route through this course, supported by a course consultant in the UK, depending on their own needs as a business person. Our purpose is not to teach entrepreneurs how to do business, but rather to provide a portfolio of computing tools for business purposes as part of this course, and to suggest ways in which these might be useful for a given entrepreneur. This gives a flavour of our work in Myanmar, which is now entering a unique historical moment.
In Nepal, we are developing a project seeking to help Nepalese institutions become more disaster-resilient, by better integrating the phenomenal expertise of individuals in the surrounding local communities into their reconstruction and operation, especially in environmentally-sensitive ways. We hope this will enable us to advocate to various international NGOs the value of streamlining aid finance into specific local institutions, thus helping to make existing aid flows into Nepal even more targeted.
Through our work in both countries, we have expanded our logistical expertise in South-East Asia, as well as deepening our understanding of how to approach and collaborate with local government; as a result, there have been numerous cross-pollinations between projects. The success of IDEAS as an entity has meant that I am also now engaged in the process of launching it formally as an NGO.
- Members of the British & Chinese business communities
- Personal mentor at Ernst & Young
- Chinese government