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Meet our New Hellopreneurs!

We have selected the next cohort of Hellopreneurs to join our Network.

By Ashoka, Hello Europe

February 24^th, 2021

We're very excited to share that our Hello Europe Community is growing! As a result of our Call for Solutions launched in May, we are proud to announce that we have selected 6 new social innovators to join our network, with new impact-driven, citizen sector solutions. In this special edition, we’d like to introduce each one of our new Hellopreneurs!

These innovators join our network of over 100 innovative solutions, selected and supported through our 11 accelerators, reaching 14 countries in Europe. To get a more concise picture of the Hello Europe network and view all the innovators' profiles, check out our Portfolio of Solutions.

6 New Hellopreneurs selected through our Call for Solutions 2020

Last year we launched our first Call for Solutions and received highly qualified applications. After several months of selection process, we are excited to announce that we have chosen 6 powerful initiatives to join our network. All the selected candidates have exhibited extraordinary entrepreneurial traits and fulfill our 4 main criteria:

the innovation of their solution to a social problem;
the soundness and feasibility of the strategy;
the social impact achieved;
and the ethical fiber and background of the social innovator.

This new cohort of social innovators will receive scaling support, have access to our Hello Europe network and be involved in co-creating policy salons, webinars and connect with other like-minded hellopreneurs. They will also have the wonderful opportunity to enroll in the modules offered by the Ashoka Europe Fellowship Program (to know more about the program and sign-up to receive updates visit their website.)

Meet our new Hellopreneurs!

Congratulations to all these wonderful social innovators!

Meet my Mama (France)

Founders: Donia Amamra, Loubna Ksibi and Youssef Oudahman

The Solution: Meet My Mama is a catering service and training academy that inspires, accompanies, and equips migrant women to become chefs, caterers, and culinary entrepreneurs. Going beyond mere training, Meet My Mama creates a community, provides administrative and legal support to ensure success in completing the program, and also helps many of the students start their own culinary businesses to not only provide for themselves, but also employ others.
The Problem: Meet my Mama seeks to tackle the barriers that thousands of migrant women in France face to become financially autonomous, which is key to their full inclusion.
Social Impact: In three years, Meet my Mama built a strong community of over 300 migrant women. Through the Mama’s Academy, they provided 1200 hours of training and coaching in the culinary sector, resulting in more than 50 migrant women becoming financially independent either by developing their own business, becoming chefs or caterers. Their catering service has over 1000 customers which enables them to offer job opportunities to their trainees.

Sirkhane (Turkey)

Founder: Pinar Demiral

The Solution: Sirkhane’s social circus breaks the cycle of violence and trauma in children and helps them transform their difficult circumstances into resilience. Founded in 2012, Sirkhane trains children from conflict-ridden backgrounds in this innovative pedagogy. Through non-formal playful activities, children develop the tools to transform their trauma into strength and resilience, while developing key skills for their future such as teamwork, communication, and leadership. Additionally, Sirkhane also works closely with families and other key stakeholders to provide children with holistic support and protection.
The Problem: The daily circumstances local and refugee children from war-torn regions experience force them to “grow up” very quickly, often forcing them to forego key childhood development processes connected to play. As a result, these children seldom carry trauma deep within into adulthood and often delve into extreme stereotypical gender roles.
Social Impact: From 2012-2020, Sirkhane has served approximately 500.000 children in Turkey and Iraq through 4 Sirkhane centers located in Mardin province, as well as two other mobile units that reach rural areas. All four Sirkhane centers are currently at capacity, serving around 300 children daily. Sirkhane is also transforming the role of refugee and local youth through their Circus Heroes Program which educates youth trainers to be able to teach others in their own communities, gain work experience, and improve their opportunities for employment in the future.

Konexio (France)

Founder: Jean Guo

The Solution: Konexio has developed a completely new way of providing job training and upskilling for migrants and refugees to be quickly successful in a diversity of job markets. Through deep and ongoing market studies, they are able to focus on digital skills that are highly in-demand, and get companies to participate in the trainings to both improve the training quality as well as to create potential connections for trainees to land a future job. Aware that many migrants drop out of long-term programs, forced to pursue less qualified job opportunities to bring income, Konexio offers short training modules that start with the immediate skills needed to start making an income. These modules build on each other up until achieving university-accredited studies, enabling migrants to learn as they work.
The Problem: There are currently over 460,000 refugees and asylum seekers in France who have skills and work experience, but due to digital exclusion and disadvantages in the labor market, the unemployment rate among them is more than 37.5%. Training programs for migrants are often long and difficult for migrants to complete without additional income, and they often do not take into consideration significant basic digital literacy gaps that migrants have.
Social Impact: In its first three years, Konexio has trained over 800 people from 24 countries, 67% of trainees have either secured employment or enrolled in longer-term accredited education programs. They have engaged over 200 local and international partners, many of whom are potential employers, and enabled 100 volunteers to give 10,000 hours to the program. Konexio has also launched a pilot program in a refugee camp in Malawi, successfully showing the model also works in transition situations.

Pocket Stories (The Netherlands)

Founder: Ingi Mehus

The Solution: Pocket Stories uses the joy of travelling and meeting new people as a strategy to create new spaces for narrative around migration, and give the power of the story-telling to migrants and other unheard voices. On the one hand, through workshops and story-telling spaces, Pocket Stories is providing tools for underrepresented voices to share a broader vision of themselves, their culture and their experiences. On the other hand, Pocket Stories compiles these narratives into projects like Roots Guide, an educational tool in the form of an interactive travel guidebook. The Roots Guide serves as a storytelling vehicle designed to increase readers’ understanding and acceptance of people with migration backgrounds in the Netherlands by featuring personal stories and travel tips from local residents with a migrant background. Importantly, migrants retain full ownership of their stories and actively participate in the co-creation process of the Guide.
The Problem: There are many problems in the way migrants are portrayed. Even well-intentioned communicators like journalists and scholars often fall into stereotypes and exoticization of migrants and minorities when talking about them, possibly doing more damage than good. A core issue is a lack of representation of migrants speaking about and for themselves, and to engage in shared conversations that don’t fall into stereotypical “us” and “them” dynamics.
Social Impact: Through the Roots Guide project, Pocket Stories, together with a bigger team of artists, designers, and researchers, is transforming the common narrative around migration by recognizing migrants as legitimately and authentically “local,” and experts in talking about the places where they live and how they contribute to their communities. More than 50 participants with migration experience have contributed and co-created the Roots Guide for readers in the Netherlands (which is yet to be released in its final version). Additionally, over 100 people have been involved in creating and testing the guidebook to self-reflect on their role and personal connection to migration. Many of which are becoming changemakers that educate and empower others through their own projects.

Embark Project (Turkey)

Founder: Nuha Boğa and Serra Titiz

The Solution: Embark is a unique initiative in Turkey that connects talented Syrian, Turkish and migrant youth with successful business leaders to exchange ideas, develop understanding, increase their employability, and build meaningful connections. The Embark Project, is an initiative under the Future is Brighter Youth Platform (GDN), a social innovation founded by Ashoka Fellow Serra Titiz.
The Problem: Turkey hosts the world’s largest refugee population with 3.6 million Syrians, who are likely to stay in the country permanently. These refugees, many of whom are young, bring important talents and potential contributions to Turkish society. However, this opportunity is generally lost due to lack of spaces and initiatives to connect refugees with key local stakeholders who can provide support and guidance, while also better understanding and getting excited about the skills they can contribute to their new context.
Social Impact: Embark´s reverse mentoring program has reached more than 150 refugee and migrant youth and more than 150 business leaders. In addition, through other youth empowerment and skills developing training, the Embark Project has been able to reach more than 300 youngsters in Turkey since its founding in 2018. New project editions have been launched with the support of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to increase the employability of Syrian, Turkish, and migrant youth and to boost efforts in economic inclusion, integration, and social cohesion.

BarcelonActua (Spain)

Founder: Laia Serrano

The Solution: BarcelonActua connects vulnerable collectives in need with people who want to help. As early pioneers in corporate and individual volunteer programs, BarcelonaActua realized that they needed to help develop an entire ecosystem that brings together people in need, volunteers and funding partners in a way that is dignifying for all three groups. Responding to increasing numbers of migrant arrivals in 2018, their focus turned significantly towards migrants and refugees. Applying their methodology, they started building healthy communities of migrants and locals interacting through leisure activities, language courses, training and volunteer opportunities (for both groups) to create further social ties and speed up inclusion. Recently they have also built community housing units, called BAC, throughout Barcelona, where locals and migrants interact and develop together, and volunteers participate in key activities. In addition to covering key needs for migrants, these centers are enabling volunteers from many walks of life to change their perceptions regarding migrants and refugees.
The Problem: Upon arrival, many migrants and refugees in Spain face serious challenges, including learning the language, developing social ties, connecting with formal and informal support networks, in addition to difficulties in securing dignified housing, employment and fulfilling paperwork requirements. On the other hand, many local citizens feel an urge to help and contribute to inclusion but find few opportunities to use their skills and informal networks.
Social Impact: The BarcelonActua online community has over 13,000 registered users, 1,600 volunteers are recruited every year, and their programs directly reach over 1,200 people from vulnerable collectives every year. In 2019, more than 350 refugees and humanitarian immigrants participated in the BAC housing programs and 500 volunteers, half from corporate programs, recording a positive change in perception in the process.

Check out our latest event: Policy Salon on Expanding Labour Migration to Europe.

Our Policy Salon on “Expanding Labour Migration to Europe: A multi-stakeholder vision,” designed in partnership with the Center for Global Development (CGD), the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and porCausa Foundation, was held on 17 February to discuss labour migration in light of the EU Pact for Asylum and Migration. We had over 120 participants!

In late 2020, the European Commission released its New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which has many laudable goals and key legislation reforms. One of the greatest challenges surrounding the pact is the roles that Member States and the EU must play, and how actors such as cities, local communities, the private sector and businesses, migrant rights associations, trade unions, diaspora groups and social entrepreneurs can contribute to provide safe and effective pathways for migrant labour across Europe. During our event, we discussed concrete roles these actors can play in promoting legal labour migration from third countries in the years to come and chart a way forward.

We had a wonderful array of speakers: Damian Boeselager (Member of the European Parliament, Greens/EFA), Gonzalo Fanjul (Co-founder, porCausa), Marta Foresti (Director, ODI), Herbert Beck (PSI and Executive Board Member from Verdi, Germany), Stella Opoku-Owusu (Deputy Director AFFORD), Marius Tollenaere (Director, Fragomen Germany), and Shada Islam (Non-Resident Fellow, CGD). The session was moderated by Helen Dempster (Assistant director, CGD).

If you missed the event, you can watch the recording here!

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