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The information has spilled out....OVF Kenya is setting
up a multi-purpose innovative all-inclusive Information
and Resource Center (Unity Center) that will act as
Business Incubator as well in the shores of Lake-Victoria,
Mbita in Western part of Kenya, Nyanza Province. The
Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and Information Communications
Technology supported GRASSUP NOW program provides
a platform for bringing together partners from all
walks of life to the address of the outstanding problems
at the community level
CISSO in an enhanced working arrangement with oneVillage
Foundation, the Comonwealth Of Learning (COL), and
with the support of Mbita Point Town Council will
tap technological and entrepreneurial expertise to
achieve breakthroughs in the reduction of poverty
in Africa. The objective is to engage the IT expertise
involved in technology-based market building efforts,
and link it to their philanthropic aims by creating
a new model of a "venture capital fund"
to trigger social change, focusing on the incubation
of social entrepAreneurs and start-ups experimenting
with the use of state of the art technologies to promote
sustainable economic development. Selected CBO's and
start-ups will gain the expertise and objectivity
necessary to refine their visions, develop their business
models, and build their teams, while efficiently moving
them along the funding path. Social investors gain
access to an expanding universe of exciting opportunities
to trigger breakthroughs in Africa's poverty reduction.
In addition, social investors will find working partners
within local organizations, entrepreneurial ventures
also working in local communities of Kenya.
All of the projects supported by this fund fit, to
the greatest extent possible, our criteria for being
scalable, catalytic, bottom-up, collaborative, and
technology-driven. GRASSUP Initiative learns from
diverse partners effort and will mobilize a cluster
of stakeholders with a direct interest in Africa's
sustainable development - African and developed countries
business leaders, government and intergovernmental
agencies, foundations, NGOs and academics. These leaders
will form a "brain trust" that will help
with the funding sourcing process, pinpointing ways
that information technology can be tapped to trigger
market-based solutions (and civil society action)
to the region's poverty. The initiative is a result
of several informal conversations and meetings with
local communities, entrepreneurs who are interested
in forming a network of organizations that serve Africa.
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