Extending Hope School

Extending Hope School

Entrepreneurs and Social activist Decent and Nadia in Malawi set up this school as a lean startup to provide quality education for children in their city. Following our Vancouver BAM event, the school will use the loan they received to add classrooms and scale up from 45 students to 195 in Dec 2019. They have enrolled 38 new kids in the last term and expect 24 new ones in January 2019.

Bella Pizzeria

Bella Pizzeria

Alex from the Bella Pizzeria, in Central Asia, pitched for scale-up funds at our Eagles Nest (Shark Tank like) event in Vancouver but lost out to the Extending Hope School. As he continued to work through issues in his business plan with his ACE coach, we were able to connect him to an investor and he received the loan he needed. He is looking to move to a new location, purchase new equipment and have more tables.

Chicken Farming – Satara, India

Chicken Farming – Satara, India

About a year ago we were able to connect a retired business leader who had built up a large Chicken and Processing Plant, to participate in advising us on starting a 5000 chicken farm in a poor district of India. We are on our third batch of 5000 chickens and it has gone well. It provides jobs for 2 full-time people and about 5 to 7 part time, people. It is also being used as an example in the area of how to do better chicken farming and people are coming from other parts of India to learn how they have done this type of farming. If everything goes well at the yearly evaluation, the team on the ground want to start 7 of these farms in different districts in western India. Chicken is the top source of meat now in India and the market is expected to increase by over 40% in the next 10 years. We have had a bit of problem with the flies in the Indian monsoon season, but it looks like we’ve been able to conquer this problem. The Health Authorities are also very excited about this farm and are desiring to help us in every way.
Rapha Tailoring – Lonavala

Rapha Tailoring – Lonavala

A Development team working with poor communities outside of Mumbai began sewing classes for the women enabling them to care for their kids while working at their own tailoring business at home. ACE invested funds for purchase of materials, as well as consultants to advise them on business opportunities.