On the 27th of February we had the chance to meet 25 entrepreneurs who will be participating in our new program, UpScale, from both the validation and scaling tracks. We enjoyed the kickoff meeting as we went into details about UpScale and future opportunities that Flow Accelerator is implementing in partnership with SPARK.
We kicked off today the business training sessions of the Shabab Plus program, with the first session on Problem/Solution Hypothesis Validation. Yousef Abdalqader, Consultant at Cambridge Consulting Services, conducted the session for participants in the West Bank, while Maher Saqqa, Institutional and Business Development Consultant at Right Way Consulting (RW), led the session for the participants in Gaza. We look forward for the upcoming training sessions that will help our incubatees in taking their ideas and solutions to a new advanced level.
Every beginning has an end, and every end is the beginning of a new adventure. Today we celebrated the end of the first cycle of the Orange Corners Palestinian Territories Incubation Programme, in the presence of the Netherlands Representative in the Palestinian Territories, Mr. Michel Rentenaar, and many representatives from the private sector and our partners from the Palestinian entrepreneurship ecosystem.
At the same time, we welcomed the second cycle and the new group of incubatees. It was a great opportunity to meet the first cycle and become part of a community of like-minded entrepreneurs. We are proud of the achievements that have been achieved and looking forward to achieving more results and supporting entrepreneurs during the coming programmes.
Under the Shabab Plus is an incubation program, which aims to incubate creative entrepreneurs that have applicable and scalable projects in the Agriculture and Tourism sectors, we held the Shabab Path training camp. A 3-day bootcamp that hosted 30 entrepreneurs from the West Bank and Gaza have attended various training sessions on entrepreneurship and business development.
The main objective of the first day was to introduce the participants to the entrepreneurial mindset and innovation in addition to the available opportunities and challenges in the agriculture and tourism fields.
As part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week, Flow Accelerator alongside Factory-X and The Engineers Union in Nablus held the “When Outsourcing and Entrepreneurship Meet” event. We were joined by two great speakers Imam Hithnawi the Business Development and Partnership Specialist and Jafar Shunnar the Co-founder & CTO at TAP. Our speakers shared their tips and tricks for gaining global exposure and how it could benefit their businesses, in addition to their insights on the fourth industrial revolution and what it holds in terms of the future of work and the skills of tomorrow that the youth of Palestine should equip themselves with.
We just finished the Orange Corners PT bootcamp for the 2nd OCPT Incubation Programme. Many experts and mentors covered a range of important and valuable topics in different training sessions covering different topics about the Lean Startup lifecycle, startup business models, and the essentials of fundraising. After two days of intensive training, the entrepreneurs were able to develop their knowledge, and ideas besides improving their presentations to be ready for the pitching day.
During the Pitching Day, we were very pleased to be joined by our experts provided their feedback to the participants and evaluated their solutions based on specific criteria during the pitching day.
It was an absolute pleasure to have H.E. Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands visits us today at the Flow Accelerator office. H.E joined us to gain insights into the steps Orange Corners Palestinian Territories is taking to support entrepreneurs in the country, as well as to speak with Palestinian entrepreneurs to gain a better understanding of the positive aspects and bright future for Palestinians despite the complicated political situation they currently live in. Three entrepreneurs got to share their stories as Palestinian entrepreneurs to Mr. Rutte, who was intrigued by their innovative solutions and the journeys they’ve taken to build their businesses.
