Background

A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture that creates social change. Social entrepreneurs are innovative, resourceful, and results oriented individuals who utilize the best of the business, nonprofit and technology worlds to develop innovative solutions that maximize their social impact.

Youth Social Enterprise Initiative (YSEI) believes in providing support to any young person from any developing region with innovative ideas, commitment and vision for social change to emerge as a social entrepreneur and create lasting impact.

YSEI was founded in 2005 as a Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) multi-stakeholder partnership program between its members - ChangeFusion, Mitra & OrphanIT. The cofounders and management of YSEI include Sunit Shrestha (Executive Director, ChangeFusion), Rahul Nainwal , (Director, Mitra), Simon Healy (Director, OrphanIT) and Sailendra Dev Appanah (ChangeFusion Partner).

Program Core Principles

Build and maintain multi-stakeholder partnerships with academia, civil society, government and the private sector are critical to building strong support networks for young social entrepreneurs
Reaching out to work with disadvantaged youth, and marginalized and underrepresented groups in society
Promotion of gender equality and human rights by ending discrimination

Team @ YSEI Secretariat

Program Lead - Sunit Shrestha

Program Coordinator - S. Dev Appanah

Program Assistant - Bruno Bernardes

Board of Advisors

Walter Fust - Director-General, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

Rinalia Abdul Rahim - Executive Director, Global Knowledge Partnership

Michael Chertok - Program Officer, Gates Foundation

Hilmy Ahamed - Managing Director, Young Asia Television

Founding Partners