First Young Water Fellowship’s edition in Asia!
We are proud to announce the launch of our first edition of the Young Water Fellowship in Asia! Indeed, this year we are implementing the Young Water Fellowship in Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh, only 59% of the population is using safely managed water services and worse, only 39% of it has access to safely managed sanitation services. Inequalities between the richest and poorest are particularly high as highlighted by the estimated ratio for overall WASH services, which was 4:9 in 2019 (JMP 2020). Women hygiene is also an important issue as there are still 30% of female students that miss school each month due to the lack of proper MHM facilities in school (BBS: national hygiene survey 2019). For these reasons, we are convinced that it is important to support young people with WASH business ideas in this country. The Young Water Fellowship Bangladesh 2021 programme is co-implemented with ygap Bangladesh and is possible thanks to the generous support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Fondation Prince Albert II de Monaco and Aqua for All.
This edition of the Young Water Fellowship is very special as it is the first taking place in Asia. The call for application took place in the end of September 2021. During this call, 33 number of young social entrepreneurs applied. In the end, we selected 8 of them, of which 4 are women, to become the official fellows of this edition.
Our first bootcamp took place at the end of November and was co-delivered with ygap. It was carried out in Bangladesh and online, due to the sanitary restrictions in force. Throughout this 5-days intensive training, our fellows had the opportunity to learn more about WASH entrepreneurship, to lay the foundations of their projects, to reinforce their business models and create synergies through team building activities.
Since December, the fellows have started their MVP phase which will last until the second bootcamp. During this phase, they are building and testing their MVPs and conducting their market studies. They are continuously supported by their coaches during this whole process.
The second bootcamp will take place on February 23rd till March 1st. During this bootcamp, they will improve their products and services according to the results of the MVP phase, plan the operations of their pilot projects and reinforce their marketing strategy.