His solution at a glance: Bridge for Billions – by Ashoka Fellow Pablo Santaeufemia – is a digital ecosystem of early-stage entrepreneurship programs that provide training and mentoring to purpose-driven enterprises globally. In these times of crisis, Bridge for Billions extends its assistance to projects offering solutions to the Coronavirus crisis and ecosystem organizations struggling to digitalize their entrepreneurship programming.

The mission of the social enterprise before Corona:

Unlocking purpose-driven innovation – building entrepreneurship programs that bring together all key players to support early-stage entrepreneurs.  
 
Pablo is democratizing access to high quality business training and mentoring for early stage entrepreneurs who have been excluded from traditional entrepreneurial ecosystems due to gender, racial, and socioeconomic reasons. Thanks to his accessible and scalable online incubation programs, Pablo and his team foster employment creation, positively affecting the lives of thousands by unleashing the power of entrepreneurship to create social and economic growth. 

What changed with Corona?

All entrepreneurs, but early-stage ones are particularly struggling in these challenging times. At the same time, supporting organizations are not setup to meet entrepreneurs’ needs during lockdown and even during the reopening, nonetheless purpose-driven innovative solutions are needed even more than before! 

How can we transform our entrepreneurial ecosystems to serve humanity and develop purpose-driven innovations if all stakeholders are struggling with the same challenges in these uncertain times?

You team up and have a sustainable and game-changing idea: Led by two Spanish Ashoka Fellows, Jose María Luzárraga Monasterio, the founder of Mondragon Team Academy and Pablo Santaeufemia, the founder of Bridge for Billions launched the initiative: Creating for Humanity.  It aims to empower 2,000 young changemaker teams in Spain and Portugal to become engines of resilient, purpose-driven, and  innovation-based job creation within a post-COVID economy.  

The project is divided into three phases:  

1. Lockdown 

1. Safe re-opening  

1. The new normal  

It activates universities and youth organizations to prototype solutions and develop enterprises that set an example for “the new normal” economy.  

Pablo and Jose are teaming up with 20 universities and youth organizations to create #EnterpriseGenerators: annexed spaces where they offer blended programs (online/offline) following the Bridge for Billions and MTA ChangeMakerLabs methodologies. Also, thanks to a train the trainer model, the overall aim is to generate:  

• 700 innovation-based, purpose-driven enterprises 

• 100 trainers of digital exponential technologies  

• Platform businesses capabilities  

The outcome of this project will be 4.600 activated youth (+9-30yrs) and 700 resilient jobs!  

The impact has already started: 35 incubators/accelerators and universities have been on-boarded to the Bridge for Billions system during the past 3 weeks. They alone have the intention to incubate 300 entrepreneurs before June.  

Ashoka: How are you dealing with the situation and what is your biggest personal worry?

Pablo: “My worry in the short-term is funding, but in the medium-term is that our universities and entrepreneurial ecosystems are not designed to confront the huge challenge of creating jobs at a massive-scale. Hence, my hope is that by exhausting all easy alternatives, assistencialist models will not work, humanity will not be able to avoid anymore the transformation that our economies need.”