F-LANE Goes Virtual: Vodafone Institute Launches the Next Round of its Global Social Impact Accelerator Programme for Female Empowerment
The global COVID-19 pandemic reveals the structural and social disadvantages for women* and girls* worldwide, more clearly than ever before. Despite many efforts in politics, business and civic society, women* and girls* still lack access to local and international educational resources, economic participation and health care.
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“The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global challenge but at the same time, a catalyst for social innovation. Thus, the Vodafone Institute will run batch #5 of its female social ventures programme remotely in 2020, and with a new partner set-up with which we want to raise F-LANE to the next level and further scale the programme globally. Furthermore, we will take up COVID-19 as a current topic for women* as agents of change and support sustainable solutions to mitigate the impact of the pandemic for them, their families and communities,” explains Inger Paus, Managing Director of the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications.
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F-LANE launches virtually with new partner set-ups
With the new round of F-LANE, which kicks off in September of 2020, the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications – Vodafone’s European Think Tank – draws upon the success of four previous programme rounds and expands its partner set-up to increase impact and scale. The Vodafone Institute runs F-LANE with its new implementation partner Yunus Social Business (YSB). Yunus Social Business was founded by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus with the vision of financing, supporting and growing social businesses with large companies who want to see business in a different way. The F-LANE founding partners Social Entrepreneurship Akademie (SEA) in Munich will continue to support F-LANE with their excellent impact entrepreneurship competencies, while the Impact Hub Berlin remains on board as Community Partner providing participating start-ups with access to the global impact community and investors. Furthermore, WLOUNGE, as a new partner to the F-LANE network, will contribute its expertise in gender lens investing and it’s local and global investors and mentors network to support the cohort.
For the first time, the programme will run remotely and virtually with digital coaching and webinars, to meet the logistical and economic challenges posed by COVID-19. It will further specifically emphasise the personal and individual support of each founding team. The programme focuses on the development of strategic measures in the areas of impact, product strategy, business model, customer access, sales strategy, marketing & branding and investment. The mentors from the global networks of Vodafone Group and Yunus Social Business as well as the other network partners like SEA, Impact Hub and WLOUNGE are in line with the specific needs of the social entrepreneurs.
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