Categories
All
Archives
April 2021
|
Back to Blog
A word from Bayo Adelaja, CEOSo much has changed across the world over the past year. As an inequality focused organisation we have seen a significant rise in the need for our services, support and advocacy for the demographic of people we centre in our work, namely Black people.
We continue to be very grateful to our key partners and clients who have financially supported our work and provided access points for our beneficiaries to gain even more support than we are able to provide as a single organisation.In keeping with our belief in open innovation, we are happy to have a network of stakeholders that have seen the need for the deliberate and continued support of the Black community in the UK and across Africa. 2019-20 has been a learning year for our organisation, in terms of what we need to do for our beneficiaries, but in light of COVID, also what we need to do to ensure our organisation’s continued sustainability financially and as a deliverer of impact across under-served communities.
Back to Blog
2019 has been an amazing year, full of challenges and milestones in equal measure. We want to share the successes with you, especially as without you as our champions and invaluable support network, this journey would have been so much more difficult. Now, as 2019 draws to a close we look back at what our incredible community has accomplished in the UK and Africa. Highlights:
We’re building an organisation that supports underserved, predominantly black, people across the world to create better lives for themselves and their communities. 2019 began with a mission to think big in order to affect growth. In conversation with some of our fantastic champions over the past few months, I was driven to consider the opportunity an organisation like Do it Now Now can provide for BAME groups worldwide. I learned that we needed to:
In the UK, we’ve been focusing our work on helping to reduce social and economic inequality within the black community. The statistics below spur us to redress the balance in equality:
Through initiatives like Black and Good (our support of black social entrepreneurs) and Moon Landing (our support of black female and non-binary local community leaders), we’re contributing to a world in which black people can gain the tools and resources needed to effectively impact the structures that affect the mobility of all of our lives on a daily basis. We’re grateful to have been funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to do this. Empowering African founders to unlock growth potential in their communities We also learned the following about Africa-based, VC-backed startup founders that have raised over $100K:
From this information, we created AfriTech XYZ; a program that supports high potential, early-stage startups across 6 African countries through an individualised mentorship program supported by skilled volunteers around the world. Our initial cohort has gone extremely well:
We are extremely excited and incredibly humbled by the interest of this group of truly wonderful people in something we created. Much more news to come on the progress of this program in 2020, but I think we’ve stumbled on something that could significantly impact the dearth of the African tech ecosystem and allow for a stronger, more effectively supported pipeline of startups to grow out of the continent. In Africa, we want to support the democratisation of access to key opportunities and information that will catalyse the growth of startups and their ability to get funded. We’re working to ensure that we can bridge as many of those gaps as possible through the AfriTech XYZ program. Thank you for your support in 2019, we hope to continue receiving your support in 2020. |
RSS Feed
Please read through our Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy. You can make a complaint here.
Also learn about our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy, our Health and Safety Policy, our Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Policy, our Sustainable Development Policy, our Anti-Bribery Policy, our Accessibility Statement, our Professional and Ethical Standards and other policies.
