Our Vision
An equitable and sustainable world
A world where everyone has equal opportunity to reach their full potential in a way that preserves the ability for future generations to do the same.
Our Mission
Advancing global equity through inclusive entrepreneurship
We create positive change by making entrepreneurship accessible to everyone.
Who We Are
ygap is an international organisation that supports early-stage social impact ventures with locally-led solutions to local problems. We believe in the power of entrepreneurship as an effective way to make sustainable and equitable change in the world.
Our work is fully informed by the communities we serve and their own entrepreneurial drive. We find, accelerate and support the growth of impact ventures led by local entrepreneurs who deeply understand the unique challenges of their communities and are best placed to develop solutions, and we create enabling environments for ventures to succeed in the ecosystems in which they operate.
Our programs are co-created and run by expert teams who are local to the areas in which we work, who deeply and easily understand local need and context. We support entrepreneurs who have high potential for success but are usually the least resourced.
Nurturing and growing existing entrepreneurial activities to achieve greater success is more impactful and longer lasting than bringing in external ideas.
ygap’s work within the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem aims to create an enabling environment for locally-led ventures to flourish.
We currently support ventures across Africa, South Asia, the Pacific Islands and Australia. ygap has offices and local teams that lead our programs in each area that we work.
Our Values
The Foundations We Work From
Our work centres around three cross-cutting areas of focus we believe are essential to underpin and help create an equitable and sustainable world; gender, climate and business digitisation. These areas of focus applied across our body of work will allow for greater inclusion, resilience and access for businesses run by entrepreneurs who are usually underestimated or overlooked.
GENDER
ygap places a strong focus on women because of the need, but also of the promise of what can be achieved when they are able to fully participate in the economy. The global ecosystem is dominated by programs that often fail to accommodate the needs of women participants. In addition to the gender lens we apply across all of our programs, we design and deliver programs that are specifically tailored for women entrepreneurs to thrive.
CLIMATE
Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events across the globe, negatively impacting entire sectors, and disrupting people’s lives and livelihoods. The consequences are not equally felt or distributed, with the countries who have contributed the least to climate change facing the worst of its early impacts. It is a real threat to the vital work our entrepreneurs lead and the communities they serve.
DIGITAL
Businesses that aren’t prepared or able to transition online run the risk of being left behind. Technology can drive financial and market access for entrepreneurs, allowing them to grow and scale their operations in a resilient way. However this potential can only be realised if the digital space is accessible to everyone. We work to address these digital inequalities and equip businesses with the digital savvy they need to thrive.
Why Business?
When thinking about business, often what comes to mind is large corporations in cities, employing men in suits. But what we’ve seen through our work is that business in today’s world is nothing like that. The significant majority of businesses in the world are vibrant pillars of the community, representing prosperity, self-determination, meaningful employment and locally-led change.
It’s a woman in Fiji finding innovative ways to grow food in places with limited access to land. It’s a former refugee in Australia who knows how difficult it is to find a job in a new country, and is helping others to access meaningful employment. It’s communities in South Africa being able to choose to purchase healthy food products that are grown and produced locally. It’s the company reclaiming manufacturing jobs in Kenya. It’s an innovative idea, a new approach, a way to do things better than we ever have before, and making sure everyone is included along the way. It’s business as anything but usual.
Through our work, we hope to reframe the way business is seen and designed, communicate the deep value it has to building a better future for all, and bring people along with us on that journey. We believe this is the best contribution we can make to work towards an equitable and sustainable world.
Our Theory of Change
ygap’s Theory of Change outlines our short-term and long-term goals, what we’re doing to work towards our vision and mission, and the key indicators we use to measure whether or not we achieve what we set out to. See our Theory of Change below:
