The Collective launch a month-long residential social impact accelerator

by Startacus Admin

Co-living company The Collective launch a month-long residential social impact accelerator for early-stage start-ups – the first of its kind globally.

Starting today (7th August 17), 10 inaugural members who were chosen from over 3,500 applicants from 158 different countries, will live and work at The Collective Old Oak for the duration of the programme and all share a common mission: to create opportunities for people in need through cutting-edge technology.

The annual Collective Global Accelerator will provide participants with the skills, advice and contacts to help them scale their socially-conscious enterprises.

A panel of leading mentors including Google’s former head of green business and clean energy for Europe, Benjamin Kott; Oli Barrett, co-founder of StartUp Britain; Melinda Nicci, CEO and founder of award-winning social enterprise Baby2Body; and William McQuillan, from respected tech investment firm Frontline Ventures, will form part of the team which will guide the entrepreneurs through the programme.

The accelerator’s mix of not-for-profit and for-profit impactful start-ups hail from nine different countries, primarily emerging markets in Asia, Africa and South America, with one originating in the US.

Ava, a software that translates any conversation into text and will colour code the different speakers, so that you can easily distinguish who says what. It enables deaf and hard of hearing people to have more equal chances in their social and professional lives.

Food for All Africa programme, a social enterprise that uses advocacy and an app to create sustainable means of nutrition for vulnerable communities through food recovery, redistribution and farming.

Moja, a SaaS platform that leverages the increased use of mobile phone devices to increase reliable blood donation by providing incentives and motivation to encourage citizens to volunteer blood regularly.

mTena, an sms-based platform that provides women in Ethiopia with maternal and infant care information. The information is tailored to the gestation period of the users and includes information such as appointment reminders, immunisation reminders, danger signs to watch out for and contextually-relevant nutritional advice.

MUZI, a start-up that democratises and decentralises health diagnostics. MUZI's first target is HIV in South Africa. With Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, its aim is to increase the amount of HIV tests by a factor of 100 in the next three years.

Sentí, an online crowdfunding platform that connects citizen donors with povertystricken cancer patients. Cancer treatment is very costly in the Philippines, and the only recourse for patients who can’t afford cancer treatment and medication is to rely on a government subsidy where the process for application, up to the release of the grant, could take two to three months.

Sikasem, a social enterprise that is dedicated to providing demystified financial information to people in urban and rural informal sectors of Sub-Saharan Africa, via SMS, voice calls, and outreach programmes.

Suncrox Solar, a Malaysian social enterprise that provides solar energy solutions by eliminating grid and fuel power dependency for home. Suncrox Solar aims to provide solar energy to more than 10,000 direct beneficiaries in 5 years’ time, and helps low income and rural communities with special solutions that meet their needs by implementing a cross-subsidisation model where profit from commercial projects are channelled to subsidise social initiatives up to 100%.

The Biz Nation, an online platform that provides high quality, real world applicable and productive skill-orientated education that generates personal, social and economic development.

TODXS, a start-up that focuses on making Brazilian businesses more LGBT-friendly. TODXS is also building a mobile app that maps the LGBT+ resources available in B

” A ‘demo day’, where the cohort will present to impact investors, will then take place on 24 August, 2017. 

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Published on: 4th August 2017