August has so far been a month of many firsts. Citi enters the social enterprise sector with a $2 million loan to KickStart International. It will be the bank’s first-ever loan to a social enterprise, and because of that there will be some hand-holding for guidance and support from the Skoll Foundation.
In spirit of collaboration, Acumen, a non-profit social venture capital fund, announced today its first recipients of technical assistance support through the Technical Assistance (TA) Initiative, a partnership effort with The Dow Chemical Company.
The TA Initiative was announced in May and represents the first phase in the launch of Acumen’s corporate engagement policy.
“I am tremendously excited about the potential this initiative holds, and the innovative implications for Acumen’s mission of tackling poverty. This partnership with the private sector paves the way for new hybrid business models across the region and beyond,” said Duncan Onyango, Acumen’s East Africa Regional Director.
Ross McLean, President of Dow Sub Saharan Africa, is also seeing value in such partnerships, saying that there are “some very interesting innovations out there amongst the social entrepreneurs that we have been talking to. I see potential linkages and I think it’s a fantastic networking opportunity to create a community response together.”
What role does Dow play? Through its 2012 Clinton Global Initiative commitment, the Dow Sustainability Corps employee engagement program was established to match interested and capable employees with NGOs, social entrepreneurs, and government agencies. It has committed support to Acumen’s portfolio companies on key business challenges.
The TA Initiative recipients are Western Seed, which produces seed varieties in Kenya to improve farmers’ productivity, Sanergy, which builds sanitation infrastructure in the slums of Nairobi, Virtual City, which develops mobile solutions to increase smallholder farmers’ income, and Sproxil, which uses mobile technology to detect counterfeit drugs.