How we secured a GRANT of Ksh. 40,500_ USD 300 for YRK 💰
YRK secured a grant investment of Ksh. 40,500/- no interest. How? Let me share it with you!
YRK is a company that has consistently made me think outside the box. Being a capital-intensive business, we often spot opportunities that can ease our journey, and this is one of those.
Sometime last year, @just_ivy_africa shared this opportunity on her stories, and ONR, being an avid follower, followed through with it and applied.
This is the poster that was shared.
The programme @women_in_africa, in partnership with the Coca-Cola Foundation, aims to support and economically empower women entrepreneurs with innovative solutions for sustainable development.
For the 1st edition, they supported women entrepreneurs in Kenya, Nigeria, and the Ivory Coast. For this 2nd edition (applications are currently open till August 19th 2023), they are helping women entrepreneurs in Egypt, Algeria and South Africa.
Now, why am I sharing this opportunity with you?
Well, in the event you’d like to:
- Attend a 4-month Harvard business-based digital program with many resources for a growing business/business owner.
- Acquire a @honorisuni soft-skills certificate for attending the 4-month program.
- Get free, no-interest/equity investment money for your business, ranging from USD 300 to USD 10,000.
A screenshot of our soft-skills certificate courtesy of YRK organic.
Then, I’d like you to keep learning more about this opportunity in this email.
I am not informed of when they will open another opportunity for Kenya, but if they do, you have this blog post from ONR to refer to and learn from based on my experience on how best to go about it. Okay?
More info on the program here if you are interested: https://wia-initiative.com/jamii-femmes-eng/
Tip – If you are interested, I’d suggest following them on their socials, turning on post notifications or actively visiting their page to see if they open slots for Kenya sometime between September and December 2023 or 1st quarter of 2024.
In the event they do, you’ll be asked to make an application.
In December 2022, Olive made the application, not knowing that the application plays a role in your overall score and grade.
The program scores the following:
- Your Application.
- Your Attendance to the 4-month digital program.
- Your Business Rating according to WIA.
I received this after completing the program about the rating scale.
Step 1 - Considering this, you can make your application bright, considering the rating scale above.
Please make sure to position your business. in a light that deems you ‘investable.’ No grant giver wants to feel like they are investing in a part-time business with no foresight of where it’s headed.
Put yourself in the investor’s shoes and ask yourself, if I provided all these resources to a business owner, what factors would prove to me their ambition and zeal to make this money work and impact others?
After you apply, you’ll be informed if you’ve taken the next step, which is attending the 4-month course program. If your application were good enough, you’d have passed. If not, then your road will end here.
Step 2 - Attend the 4-month program in its entirety.
I will not lie; the course is long. If you are too busy to attend, I’ll give you some sneaky advice.
Share the login details of your portal with one of your trusted employees or team members. Let them attend the class and make notes for you to refer to. I promise you – this will save you a great deal. (This came through for us!)
- If you don’t finish the course, your chance of being awarded any monetary investment will be deemed null and void.
So, how did YRK perform on the ratings?
Here is a screenshot of our ranking.
We were ranked #128 out of 295 with an overall rating of 483.5 out of 728.5.
Our application rating was 380, which was good. That was a solid 71.6%. That means our application was well done.
However, rating 2 based on Performance factors – Innovation, Social Impact, Reach and Consistency, we got a 103.5, which could have been a better score for sure – 42.29%. This impacted our overall rating negatively.
Anyway, that showed us the areas we needed to work on for the business from an investor’s perspective or an external eye looking in, so we soldier on!
Once the rankings were shared with us by email, YRK received a grant of USD 300 a few weeks later, equivalent to Ksh. 40,500 was sent directly to Mpesa after the program winner was announced.
It’s good to note that there are a total of 4 grants disbursed according to your scores and other factors.
If you emerge as the best in the program, you will be awarded USD 10,000. Then numbers 2 to 20 received USD 1600, 22 to 113 received USD 600, and 114 to 223 received USD 300.
And with that,
I want to give hearty congratulations to the founder of Saru Organics for emerging as #1 in Kenya and nabbing the USD 10,000 grant for her business.
This would come through for any business owner, so let us celebrate her here!
