Now available – your chance to explore enpact’s quest of championing business for good in 2021 – the 3rd edition of our yearbook!
What started out in 2013 in a living room with two people has morphed into a global organization with over 50 people operating in more than nine countries across three continents. We’re grateful, we’re nervous, we’re excited, and we’re here to share it all with you.
For the third year in a row, we’re proud to present our yearbook: A bird’s eye view with stories about the highlights, challenges and successes of our projects in 2021. It contains a kalediscopic mosaic of the voices of everyone involved in our quest to empower entrepreneurs around the world.
Why did we create the yearbook?
The most popular literary advice in storytelling is Show, Don’t Tell. This is what we set out to do when we first created the yearbook. We didn’t want to just put numbers on paper and list out the activities we carried out, we wanted to show you what it meant to be part of the enpact community in every step of the way. Sharing human interest stories about what happens when you get involved, what others who got involved experienced, what worked out for us enpactors, where we failed, and what we did to get back up.
Transparency and knowledge exchange
None of us exists in a vacuum! Hence, we strongly believe that the best way for all of us to grow is through the transparent sharing of our experiences. enpact would not be where we are today without partners around the world who believed in our approach and shared their knowledge and resources with us. Other organizations and individuals in the field of development cooperation can then look through this yearbook and see examples of best practices, things to do, things to avoid, ideas to explore, and more, so none of us have to start from scratch or do this alone.
Giving credit where credit is due
Our team consists of 50+ individuals based around the world from various entrepreneurship ecosystems. Our community has grown to more than 3,200 business founders, 1,100 mentors/experts and 200+ organizations. We owe our successes to their effort, and we want them to be at the forefront of telling their own stories. Each article in the yearbook is a contribution by a team member, an entrepreneur, or a partner and our way of giving the voice to those who actually do the work.
Zooming in from the birds-eye to individual portraits
The yearbook starts by introducing our big vision for the next decade – the reduction of economic inequalities and the advancement of social prosperity via entrepreneurial activity – while also providing a glimpse behind the scenes at enpact. This is followed by a representative summary of nearly all of our projects and their impact. Finally, it dives deep into the personal stories of the very people affected by them. We really hope that this allows you to get a holistic picture of our work from all its many angles.
In total, it contains 105 pages of insights, reflections, and thoughts by entrepreneurs, innovators and entrepreneurship enablers across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Here are some sneak preview highlights:
- Restructuring enpact for infinite impact: The ground floor of the enpact Foundation
- A summary of the pilot programs of the Empowering Entrepreneurship Initiative with first-hand accounts from its participants
- Biggest cohort to date with the Tourism Recovery Programme (415 businesses): Expanding to South Africa and Tunisia
- Running a remote, decentralized organization: enpact’s ten commandments of organizational culture
- A new take on employee training: A spotlight on our Learning Cafe
- Making space for innovation and creative expression in the heart of the city: 4 years of our Startup Haus Cairo
- How do you scale a community: Our experience with the Facebook Community Accelerator
- Launching the AfricaBerlin Network: Why the way forward for entrepreneurship ecosystems is global collaboration
- Building a gateway for entrepreneurs to expand into Europe: Our Berlin Landing Pad and work with AsiaBerlin
- Running virtual and hybrid events: All that we have learned over the last two years
Do you see your favorite article among those – or is it a different one? We would love to hear back from you!
First and foremost, the yearbook is a labor of love and gratitude. We hence want to take the time to thank our donors and partners, whose support makes all of this possible; our community of entrepreneurs, who are the ones rolling up their sleeves and changing lives around them; our very own team – the enpactors, who work tirelessly to make sure that we successfully implement our programs and that our support is delivered to those who need it in the way they need it. Last but not least, we’d like to thank Annika, Cindy & Lucas from REDHILL for their valuable work as mid-wives (and -men) in bringing our yearbook baby to life!
Grab a coffee and dive in.
P.S: We are always looking for more voices and perspectives to feature. If you would like to contribute an article to our blog or a feature for our Yearbook, you can pitch to us by sending a quick e-mail to communications@enpact.org with the subject line: empower Stories – Your Pitch Title.