Recognising the diversity in the type of support needed across Asia versus the Pacific Islands, two tailored programs were designed and delivered:
The SFI Response Program in the Pacific was a 6 month integrated support program that provided 7 Social Enterprises (SEs) and 6 Entrepreneurship Support Organisations (ESOs) with the funding, peer support and technical advice needed for them to build their resilience in light of the social, economic and health crises impacting the Pacific Islands. Through the ESOs, a further 240+ enterprises received support as part of this program.
The Build Back Better Program was a 16-week program aimed to build the resilience of Entrepreneur Support Organisations (ESO) in South & Southeast Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Spanning from July to October 2020, the program was tailored to support ESO leaders through weekly intensive Masterclasses and structured peer support circles. Topics in the curriculum were specifically prepared for the leaders to quickly implement their learnings to their own organisations and programs, including Ecosystem Mapping, Pivoting and Growing Post-COVID.
As a business owner, whether you’ve called it pivoting, testing, adapting or just surviving, the impacts of the pandemic were likely not part of your business plan. In this blog we explore how four Fiji based entrepreneurs attempted to find balance in an uncertain world.
When the pandemic began early in 2020, few of us really understood how deeply it would impact our work and lives. Instead of preparing for long-term change, we searched for short term measures to tide us over until a return to ‘normalcy.’