Deadline: February 11, 2019
Applications are now open for the Young Sustainable Impact (YSI) Innovation Program 2019. This is a fully funded innovation program for youth, aimed at finding the best talents in the world to create impact startups tackling the sustainable development goals.
Become part of the incredible 5-month journey to create a startup from scratch with people from around the globe, culminating in a 2-week accelerator in Oslo, Norway. During 5-month you will go through team building, design thinking, and a prototyping process, before arriving Oslo, Norway in August 2019.
About the Program
- Online program: March 20th – August 12th
- Live in Oslo, Norway: August 11th – 25th
The aim is for you and your team to create a real startup that helps solve the sustainable development goals and are economically viable. Brilliant individuals are put in international teams of 3 people and will go through 4 modules and 8 objectives in five months. 4,5 months are online and the two last weeks is in Oslo, Norway where you get a fully funded trip to meet mentors, your teammates and investors.
The program offers knowledge and tools in innovation, creativity and leadership. They train the teams to operate their own startup, as well as going from nothing to a fully fledged startup in 5 months. They provide close mentorship and follow up through their innovation team, access to the YSI network of talents, partners and mentors. They also train the team’s to find the necessary information and help they need for themselves. The program will be facilitated online, primarily using an education platform named www.novoed.com.
Benefits
Fully funded 5-month innovation program
- Education: By using www.novoed.com they have our own curriculum to assist people in almost every aspect of creating a startup from scratch. You will also get webinars by professionals, discussion groups, and a library full of knowledge, tools, and methods.
- Fully funded trip to Norway: After working online for 4,5 months, you will be flown into Oslo, Norway. They will house you for two weeks, where they will have an accelerator to boost your startup. There will be cool events, parties, hangouts, sightseeing, and time to stroll around the city.
- Network & Mentors: Through their Partners and professional network, They have a vast amount of experts to help out throughout the program.
- Money and access: To ensure that you get to create your product, or at least something tangible to test with, you can apply for grants to your startup with a record speed of 24 hours answer. This is only for YSI Global innovation teams.
- Community: Their community, Earthpreneurs, is a group of people that aim to make sustainability business as usual. This is a group of people that are willing to help each other out, and when you are in YSI, you have an even better access to this community.
- World class team: There are around 10.000 applicants every year to their program. Only 21 people get in, which means that you will get one of the best teams in the world!
Eligibility
The people they are looking for should recognize themselves in these sentences:
- 16-28-year-old people
- All countries are welcome to apply
- People with 15-35 hours to use every week from April-August.
- Dedicated people with a real drive for solving complex problems.
- People who are willing to make time and want to create a real startup.
- People with a proven track record of excellence in resilience, drive, and who are passionately able to use their skills and knowledge towards a project of any kind.
- Open minded people who are willing to understand different walks of life, see things in a new perspective, and with an intention of creating a positive impact.
- People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, and bold enough to actually do it.
- People who don’t get discouraged by creating a startup remotely with new people from different continents.
- People who can make decisions and keep their cool under extreme uncertainty.
Application
- Apply as an individual: YSI is looking for you who want to change the world through entrepreneurship
- Get paired with top talents: You will be carefully selected and paired with diversified talents from around the world
- 5 month online incubation: You will build a startup during the five month online incubation program and a two-week accelerator in Oslo, Norway
- Fully funded opportunity: The program is fully funded, but requires your dedication and hard work (15-35 hours/week)
After round 3 they interview to figure out who should be in the program, and they put you in a team. Over the first three weeks of the program, they will assess if the team works or not. The teams are usually of 2-3 people (but during the program your team can build with one more person from the YSI database).
For more information, visit Young Sustainable Impact.
