Expert ‘Impact Teams’ to empower Compassion alumni innovators to take next steps toward successful, social-impact ventures
Yesterday, during Belmont University’s annual Hope Summit event, child development organization Compassion International and Belmont Innovation Labs announced a new partnership to pilot Impact Teams, groups of expert volunteers and mentors who will come alongside social innovators dedicated to addressing the world’s most formidable challenges. Impact Teams are designed to work with global and local entrepreneurs who are making a positive change in their communities.
Josh Yates, director of Belmont Innovation Labs, explains, “Our work is focused on mobilizing social innovation ecosystems that enable human flourishing. This new pilot project with Compassion will select alumni from their child sponsorship program who are now pursuing social enterprises and connect them with leaders who can support their efforts to transform communities. It’s a dynamic initiative that will foster both an empowering environment and a supportive network to unleash enduring and impactful solutions.”
Research indicates that the primary reasons most social ventures fail are a lack of mentoring and encouragement, limited access to crucial technical assistance, and chronic underfunding. Impact Teams embed visionary entrepreneurs into communities of dedicated mentors, collaborators, and champions. Together, Impact Teams and entrepreneurs can collectively refine and propel the most promising ideas into actionable solutions poised to transform industries, sectors, and communities.
“While Compassion is deeply grateful for every one of the 2.3 million children currently in our care, we all know that there are hundreds of millions more living in desperate and unacceptable poverty all around our world today,” shares Compassion president and CEO Santiago “Jimmy” Mellado. “Compassion is compelled by a moral and a missional imperative to do more. Given the scale and complexity of the global problem of poverty, we know we will never gain the momentum needed to truly be relevant to the issue without significant, ongoing innovation and invention.”
With a strong focus on innovative solutions, Compassion plans to pilot the global phase of this new initiative. With more than 1.5 million child sponsorship alumni around the world, Compassion program graduates are dedicated to giving back and uplifting their own communities. Many of these alumni are passionate social innovators and entrepreneurs who know first-hand the complexities of issues impacting their regions and can drive contextualized solutions to local challenges.
The first two Compassion alumni entrepreneurs have already been selected:
Jey Mbiro, founder and CEO of Sauti Village
Raised in one of the largest and poorest slums on the African continent, Mbiro’s childhood was a difficult one – until he was invited into Compassion’s child development program. Now, he wants to lend that same helping hand to others as the founder and CEO of Sauti Village. Sauti Village equips children out of poverty across Africa by partnering each child with an African mentor who empowers them through loving, godly mentorship and connects them to relevant talent programs for employment.
Maureen Kaderi, executive director of Rehema House
Kaderi, also a Compassion alumna, is the co-founder and full-time executive director of Rehema House in Kenya. (“Rehema” is the Swahili word for mercy.) As of spring of 2023, Rehema House has welcomed 77 pregnant teens between the ages of 12-16 years old and 75 miracle babies. A vast number of empowerment programs and opportunities are available to the residents during their two-plus year stay before they are transitioned into a sponsorship program for an additional two to four years.
Impact Teams will consist of coaches, subject matter experts, business leaders, storytellers, investors, and Belmont students in a related field who can collectively empower the entrepreneur’s success. The pilot project aims to support social innovators, like Mbiro and Kaderi, who have already launched an initiative. In year one, the entrepreneurs will meet with their designated Impact Teams three times in person while also collaborating virtually on a frequent basis.
Founded in 2022 with a multi-sector, multi-stakeholder approach, Belmont Innovation Labs tackle complex challenges facing society, collaborating in working groups around core issues to develop ventures that promote human flourishing and community thriving. Last month the Innovation Labs received a $6 million grant from Templeton Religion Trust for its work with the Transformational Business Network (TBN) to form the Transformational Business Network Alliance. A global network of purpose-driven investors, entrepreneurs and capacity builders, the TBN Alliance takes an enterprise approach to alleviate poverty in low-income and underserved communities. This new grant will allow the TBN Alliance to catalyze a movement of social impact champions on a global scale, geared toward support of businesses in frontier and emerging markets. Over the next five years, the TBN Alliance will launch an estimated 1,800 ventures, providing approximately 11,850 new jobs in frontier and emerging markets globally.
Like the TBN Alliance, this new partnership between Belmont Innovation Labs and Compassion International promises to leverage both organizations’ missions and strengths to contribute to making a tangible difference for families living in poverty.
As Kaderi, Compassion alumna and selected entrepreneur, says, “There is power in holding other people’s hands. It’s hope that trickles down to the family, to the community, and to the world. I am a world changer because people invested in me and held my hands. Today, I am holding others’ hands as it was done to me.”
Compassion and Belmont Innovation Labs look forward to leveraging the missions and strengths of both organizations to make a tangible difference for families living in poverty around the world. To learn more about Impact Teams, visit belmont.edu/impact-teams.