HiiL Innovation Hub – East Africa is a social enterprise dedicated to finding and supporting the most promising justice entrepreneurs in East Africa. We seek startups that solve people’s justice problems and aspire for them to have access to justice at work, at home, in their neighbourhoods, and in business.
We support startups that empower people with break-through innovations to create better:
- working conditions with their employer
- separation terms with their spouse
- protection against theft, fraud, and violence
- arrangements about noise, damages, and property access with their neighbour
- housing maintenance and rent conditions with their landlord
- agreements on ownership, registration, and use of land
- contracts, fraud protection, and compliance for their small business.
The Justice Entrepreneurship School is HiiL’s flagship incubation programme that supports early-stage entrepreneurs that are preventing or resolving pressing justice needs in their communities. The programme is catered to startups in the incubation stage, where there is a Minimal Viable Product or Service, but no traction and runs for a period of 6 weeks. Focused on delivering high-quality action learning, the programme focuses on business modelling, storytelling, pitching and justice design thinking. This year the programme is focused in supporting innovative early stage startups in Kenya.
During the incubation programme, the startups will work on getting their product into the hands of users as fast as possible, aggressively and consistently obtain their feedback, and refine the MVP accordingly. This includes getting enough users and running tests on them.
WORTH
The Justice Entrepreneurship School offers a six-week-long programme that provides justice startups with:
- A one-week residential boot camp delivered by industry specialists: business growth, team & leadership, design thinking, and much more.
- Coaching sessions and mentorship on topics of your choice.
- Access to HiiL’s regional network of justice leaders, legal tech organisations, and top-level researchers.
- Certification and a learning platform for self-service.
- A chance to win up to €1000 at the end of the programme during the Justice Innovation Circle demo day.
ELIGIBILITY
The programme is suitable for Startups that:
- Have a solution that meets the needs of those with unmet justice needs who struggle to access effective, easy-to-understand, affordable, and accessible means to prevent or resolve their justice problems.
- Have a basic product or service, that is, an existing prototype or minimal viable problem.
- Have no traction, that is, the product is still not in the hand of users, or it’s only in hands of a small number of early adopter users, where we still do not see enough evidence that this product or business can work.
- Led by a team of 2 or 3 committed and passionate co-founders who shares a drive for justice and impact.
DEADLINE: May 31, 2023
To apply and for more information, apply here.
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