Be! an Entrepreneur is a mass movement of stories.
50 books teach 50 entrepreneurial skills to children in school
Seven epic movies and a 15-part radio series inspire young people age
18+ to pioneer enterprises that solve local problems and create jobs.
By 2020 there will be over 190 million unemployed people below the age of 30 in India. Today, 50% of children enrolled in school are dropping out of school (which means the next generation work force will be largely unskilled). At the same time, we face pressing resource problems of water, waste, energy, shelter, food - and have no big solutions.
So what do we do, when we don’t yet have the solutions we need, for the time we are in? We go in search. Be! is a new model, a new way to solve poverty on a massive scale.
Be! Books teach entrepreneurial skills and make education relevant to employment. Be! Books will be read by 300,000 children in 1,000 government schools in Bihar in the first stage of rollout. Each week, children read one book and complete a skills activity that we monitor.
Be! Movies tell stories of hero entrepreneurs from low-income groups who one day decide to start a business to solve a problem where they live. Be! Movies create massive public awareness and a supportive environment for young people who live in poverty to choose to become entrepreneurs and solve problems where they live. Be! Movies air on STAR, reaching over 100 million young people who live in poverty. Each movie drives young people who live in poverty to a new source of ‘risk’ finance: Be! Fund
Be! Fund provides new access to risk-capital (up to $10,000) and business skill support to young people with for-profit ideas to solve a local social problem—ideas they define and propose. When they make it through the selection process, young people get direct investment into their businesses, and the movie series starts again, this time with real hero entrepreneurs.
