The Green Entrepreneurship Program targets entrepreneurs with green business ideas, living in any Palestinian locality, and are at any age or have any educational background.
By the end of the program, all participants are expected to accomplish the following:
- Finalizing their green business idea
- Testing the idea in the real market
- Developing a product / service prototype
- Developing a marketing plan
- Developing of a business plan
The Program includes intensive in-class training sessions, coaching between sessions, after-training mentoring to the best participants, 6-month incubation of 2 participants @ B-Hub (with potential to provide office space and admin support if needed), international networking, and an opportunity to compete for green grants of up to EURO 15,000.
In total, and within this phase, eight workshops will be delivered and distributed over three regions: South, North, and Center. The number of workshops in each region will depend on the geographical distribution of applicants.
Candidates from Gaza Strip will be able to participate via Skype.
Each workshop consists of 5 in-class sessions distributed over 5 weeks in order to provide sufficient time to participants to collect market data and develop product & service prototypes.
Timing of the in-class sessions is flexible: upon agreement with all participants, the sessions can be delivered in the morning time, from 9 am to 3 pm, or in the evenings, from 3 pm to 8 pm.
The first training workshop will start on August 4th, 2018.
In total, 160 candidates will be selected to participate in the program. The selection process is transparent and involves experienced jury members. The selection criteria is explained at the end of this page.
The program’s methodology is unique and developed exclusively for the SwitchMed Programme by the best European green experts. Each participant will be provided with a copy of the workbook for the in-class exercises and future reference.
All training sessions and materials are in Arabic and suit participants with any educational backgrounds.
All trainers have undertaken the Training of Trainers in the SwitchMed training & coaching methodology and possess sound backgrounds in assigning green businesses.
In addition to the business training and coaching, the program will provide technical experts in any field needed, for example, experts in organic farming, mechanical engineers, IT professionals, etc. The participants will also have access to the technical laboratories at Birzeit University to develop and test their product prototypes.
The participation in the program is free for the selected candidates and is covered by the SwitchMed and B-Hub. Light and healthy refreshments and lunch will be provided during the in-class sessions.
The program does not cover transportation expenses for traveling to and from the training locality.
The participants will be selected upon the following criteria:
- Economic viability of the business idea
- Environmental value of the business idea
- Social value of the business idea
For Registration please click here. For further details about the training, please check the brochure, or visit the SwitchMed Programme website.
