Youth Business International’s Green and Social Toolkit Accelerates Growth in Startups
This Earth Day, YBI is shining the spotlight on our Green and Social Toolkit and the inspiring young entrepreneurs whose businesses are driving towards building a better future for us all.
There are approximately 10 million social enterprises around the world, generating around $2 trillion in revenue each year and creating almost 200 million jobs, according to the World Economic Forum.
Young green and social entrepreneurs are at the forefront of driving this change and are vital to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, but face enormous barriers to success like funding gaps, market challenges, and regulatory hurdles.
YBI, with its 25 years of global expertise in youth entrepreneurship support, saw a gap in support: traditional training wasn’t as effective for green and social young entrepreneurs as it needed to be.
This is why we launched our Green and Social Toolkit programme. To develop the toolkit, YBI worked with a selection of our global members to pilot, test, improve and scale the resource before launching it on the YBI Learning Portal, where it’s now available to all YBI members.
Launched in 2022 and supported by Accenture, this initiative aimed to learn and troubleshoot the most effective support for underserved and young entrepreneurs looking to start and grow green and social initiatives. Through its pilots and testing, it has already made a lasting impact on the 700 youth businesses that received training and support, as well as sending ripples of change through the organisations that ran the pilots and their local entrepreneurship ecosystems.
The creation of the Toolkit
This toolkit was developed in partnership with nine of our members.
Throughout the pilot, nearly 700 young entrepreneurs received support and training that incorporated the modules of the Green and Social Toolkit.
Here’s what they said:
100% of respondents would recommend the toolkit to others.
97% of respondents are currently operating either social or environmental businesses.
89% reported an increase in confidence to run social and green businesses.
88% noted an improvement in their ability to achieve social and environmental goals, while 79.5% observed a positive impact on their businesses as a result of increased knowledge.
76.6% reported an increase in business revenue within six months of completing the program.
65% adapted an existing product or service to address social and environmental issues, while 51.6% developed a new product or service for the same purpose. Additionally, 89% reported scaling a product or service to meet social and environmental challenges.
83% attributed their success over the past six months to the toolkit, while 86% linked their business impact directly to the toolkit.
What young entrepreneurs say
“Participating in the YBI training has been transformative for our company. It shed light on the disorganized state of our management documents and provided a structured approach to clarify our company’s vision, goals, and challenges. This newfound clarity has propelled us to formulate a comprehensive plan for improvement.“
Enkhtuul Dambasuren, 27, founder of Hatan Sevrei. Supported by Youth Business Mongolia.
“The toolkit has impacted my business and personal life by helping me to be more focused on what we wanted to do as a business and not put our energy into too many places that wouldn’t necessarily tie back to what we wanted to achieve. I would say the same for my personal life because once I get the business kind of streamlined, it takes a little bit of pressure off of my personal life as well.”
Soraya Toppin-Herbert, 30, founder of Raya 34 Sports. Supported by Barbados Youth Business Trust
“The support from Fate Foundation has made my business grow and improve astronomically. My business is more structured, more profitable and on the path to grow into becoming a large-scale aggri-business that will be able to feed its population not only in Nigeria but across Africa at large.”
Samuel Kolapo, 35, founder of Prime Leverage Limited, Nigeria. Supported by Fate Foundation.
The impact on ESOs
B’YEAH has adapted the toolkit to deliver new training for social and green businesses in partnership with international funders. They are also using the toolkit content to develop an email program that sends weekly tips to entrepreneurs on growing their social and green businesses.
Development Solutions has used the knowledge gained to build an advocacy structure aimed at developing a legal framework for social entrepreneurship in Mongolia. In addition, they have partnered with organizations such as the EU, ADB, and the Global Environment Facility to deliver training programs to social and green businesses. They have also published the toolkit in book form, translated into Mongolian and simplified for use in rural areas.
CAP YEI has developed a new funding partnership as a result of the pilot. They are working alongside the national TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) system to embed the toolkit into the national curriculum.
FATE Foundation has used the toolkit to reassess its operations, ensuring they are responsive to social and green needs. The foundation has incorporated the Self-Reflection Framework into all its existing programs and created a new module on social and green entrepreneurship within its incubator program.
Youth Business Caribbean is designing an accelerator program for growth-stage social and green businesses, with plans to integrate a revenue model into the program.
Celebrating Earth Day 2025
Testimonials from those who have received training from the Green and Social Toolkit highlight the determination and vision of young entrepreneurs to make an impact on their community and beyond. With the right tools, youth businesses have the potential to create a more sustainable future that puts people and the planet at the heart of the economy.
With this year’s Earth Day focusing on ‘our power, our planet’, it’s inspiring to hear from some of the businesses that have achieved a renewed focus on their purpose and improved business growth thanks to the YBI network’s support, and that are finding ways to be more energy efficient and embed sustainability at their core as they grow.
Spreading the word to support green and social business
Investment-ready green and social young entrepreneurs
What’s next for our green and social mission? At YBI, we know there is a clear gap in support for the cohort of businesses that no longer require start-up support as they are growing rapidly and successfully but are too small to interest major investors. To compound this, there are limited investment opportunities and almost no support to take these businesses to the next stage of growth. This is especially true for climate, green and social businesses. Our investment-ready training with specialist support for green and climate entrepreneurs is currently being planned.
