SOCAP21 Virtual Scholarship Entrepreneurs Winners Reshaping Agriculture
Every year, SOCAP grants scholarships to social entrepreneurs from all over the globe. This year’s entrepreneurs represent incredible solutions to pressing social, cultural, and environmental problems.
Check out the full list of winners here. SOCAP21 virtual scholarship entrepreneur winners in agriculture are making a positive impact by working with farmers, focusing on food access, and more.
Below, hear how nine entrepreneurs from around the world are making a difference in agriculture and the environment, from smallholder farmers around the world to helping people develop new relationships with food and food production.
Join us at SOCAP21, alongside all of our social entrepreneurs who are bringing the most innovative solutions around the globe to scale.
What is your company solving for?
Boka feeds work with smallholder farmers to enable them to increase and improve production of proteins in eggs, milk and meat. This is accompanied with free training from experienced team members to enhance food security.
What is inspiring you now?
I am impacting smallholder farmers in Western Kenya directly and indirectly through supplying them with animal feeds accompanied with free trainings. This has improved and increased proteins in the community to enhance food security.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
To join the community of experienced mentors and trainers to learn more on entrepreneurship and leadership. To do networking and partner with investors to raise funds to scale up the business. To apply the skills and knowledge in my business.
What is your company solving for?
Eat Better Wa’ik is an organization to generate creative and inclusive food awareness and action to reduce malnutrition, merging food security, climate sustainability and human rights. We do so with education, economics, transformative agriculture, consumption and technology, and creating communities to change and improve the narrative, comprehension and behavior from and towards food.
What is inspiring you now?
Bringing people together to share perspectives for social causes
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
In these times of change, if we don’t improve, then…what is there left?
What is your company solving for?
Iburu is a platform providing smallholder farmers in Mount Kenya highlands access to global market opportunities for their shade-grown coffee. We encourage farming techniques that guarantee high-quality coffee, promote healthy ecosystems for biodiversity and preserve forests.
What is inspiring you now?
I grew up in Mount Kenya highlands where cool climate and forested landscapes are optimal for coffee farming. However, my inspiration for this work stemmed from helplessly watching my father and neighbors convert their coffee farms into other destructive land uses due to low returns. The impact that our work has for the smallholder coffee farmers, the community and environment is what keeps going. Seeing more farmers rehabilitate their abandoned coffee farms, tend existing or add new coffee trees while preserving the adjacent Mount Kenya forest gives me energy.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
To learn and collaborate with others in their efforts towards sustainable economy and contribute to climate action. Additionally, being able to look at similar challenges from numerous perspectives that will emanate from other participants and sharing my own experiences for a common goal.
The Last Bottle, Public Benefit Corporation
What is your company solving for?
Last Bottle has brought a completely closed-loop solution to the apparel industry; making clothing entirely out of recycled materials while garments are 100% recyclable into new clothing at the end of their useful life. We can also enable other brands to bring this closed-loop process into their offerings, impacting plastic pollution, energy, and water usage.
What is inspiring you now?
Seeing a lot more urgency in governments and corporations to help tackle environmental issues coming out of the pandemic.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
To seek out more early stage closed-loop solutions, even in the pre-seed phase.
What is your company solving for?
Toolsvilla is an online marketplace for machinery, tools and supplies that solve operational inefficiencies in the small agri-food businesses of India. Through Toolsvilla, farmers get access to advisory, training and products that help them in reducing their cost of farming and create additional sources of income.
What is inspiring you now?
Our startup’s ability to reduce costs of operations for smallholder farmers and create additional income opportunities for the low income rural population of India.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Decent work and economic growth.
What is your company solving for?
We design and assemble electric bicycles and solar-powered electric tricycles for use as productive assets capable of delivering both social and affordable physical mobility.
What is inspiring you now?
Adding value to our customers.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Be adaptable. Keep learning.
What is your company solving for?
Spira absorbs CO2, provides employment for farmers in developing communities, and shifts companies towards using healthier more sustainable ingredients from algae.
What is inspiring you now?
I am continually amazed and inspired by my team. They’ve been pushing so hard for so long it’s incredible to see how much progress we’ve made in a short period of time. Every day I’m thankful for the work we do to absorb CO2, help farmers in developing communities and shift companies to healthier ingredients.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Focus on the hard stuff and the deep tech. Software solutions don’t affect actual change, they just enable it. Support founders who are working on the cutting-edge of the possible in biotech, food, agriculture and more.
What is your company solving for?
unBox is a youth-led organization focused on empowering and involving youth in food access and security through data analysis, community engagement, and policy advocacy. One branch of our organization is filing for non-profit status, and we have another social enterprise branch that is creating an online platform to help farmers markets and retailers apply for and manage SNAP/WIC, furthering food access in the U.S.
What is inspiring you now?
I have been inspired with the wellspring of people who are also passionate about food access and security, and have been reaching out from the community looking to get involved. Impact is best led by the community, so seeing this outreach and engagement provides much needed energy for working in collaboration with a variety of stakeholders to further change
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
A call to action for the SOCAP community would be to make a concerted effort to start or create meaningful partnerships during the conference, so that this community and the incredible organizations present can find ways to collaborate and magnify each other’s impact.
What is your company solving for?
Voyaging Foods makes fiber-filled alternative flours and food products from Hawaiian grown canoe plants such as taro, breadfruit and sweet potato.
What is inspiring you now?
Reconnecting culture and sovereignty through traditional food ways.
What call to action or advice do you have for others?
Co-collaborate in action-steps; follow up and don’t just talk.
