Microincubation
Plustrust recognises the urgent need to locate and nurture entrepreneurial talent is rural and remote locations.
The need for incubation support for start-ups well accepted. It is increasingly available in urban and metros centres, especially for youth with education and exposure to technology. However, such a supportive environment is lacking particularly for women, in rural resource-poor communities. This widening gap in the incubation and start-up ecosystem can only be addressed by ground-up, grassroots level interventions with a special focus on women. Plustrust decided to address this situation in 2015 and began work by introducing microincubation fellowships for Rural Women. Our approach is clearly focused on a woman’s individual agency and aspirations for leading change in her community.
Plustrust has provided micro-incubation support and fellowships to 161 rural changemakers. It has sustained peer-led support through a network of 14 active anchors in 9 states and set up 2 Collaboration Hubs s to widen reach. Through its work, it has been able to identify a trajectory of the journey of grassroot changemakers and offer critical support at the very early stage.
Development Path for Changemakers
Stage | Focus of relationship | Personal Qualities for selection | Outcomes | Impact on changemakers |
Fellowship | Microincubation | Personal struggles, Readiness to try own ideas, Action focus | Changemaker pilots an idea and learns from the experience and anchors’ mentoring | Builds her personal professional and project management capacity. |
Alumni engagement | Skill building, networking and professional development | Interest in building own knowledge and skills | Changemaker stabilises her work, builds team or volunteer group | Emerges as a grassroots changemaker |
Anchor development | Replicating the fellowship process in their grassroot context | Experience of Plustrust fellowship , leads a grassroot change initiative, integrates Plustrust fellowships in own initiative | Spread of Micro incubation opportunities/ support for rural women | Mentors and develops emerging changemakers |
Collaboration | Microincubation becomes a programme element for an NGO | Interested in integrating fellowship model in their own program
| Ecosystem develops to support women changemakers | Collaborator sees ‘whole picture’ and thinks strategically and systemically |
Symbiosis | Grassroot innovation | New project ideas for joint implementation, with managerial and technical support from Plustrust | Facilitating innovation and entrepreneurship among women and girls | To spread innovative entrepreneurial behaviour |