The Swiss Re Foundation Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award honours entrepreneurial initiatives that take innovative approaches to building resilient societies and actualizing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. While resilience is the core theme of this annual programme, its specific focus changes from year to year.
For many poor communities, the ability to safeguard health and livelihoods can easily come under threat from risks such as sickness, natural catastrophes, and the effects of climate change. Vulnerability to these risks encourages defensive, risk-averse choices, inhibiting the ability to plan, save, build and prosper.
Social entrepreneurs create positive change through new initiatives. They spread their solutions among communities, institutions and the private sector. By looking for new models and systems, they create social value and change people’s lives for the better.
The Swiss Re Foundation believe they can make the most valuable contribution to social enterprises in their early stages. Its funding therefore targets the development and testing of fledgling business models and the scale-up of impactful initiatives.
Launched in 2016, the Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award is a good example of this approach.
Since 2016, the Swiss Re Foundation has worked with a total of 15 promising entrepreneurs across the globe and have awarded over 3 million USD to support their businesses.
Call for Applications
This call for applications is an invitation to social entrepreneurs working in LMICs to make healthcare financially more accessible in low-income communities.
The 2023 Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award focuses on innovative, market-based solutions that increase financial access to healthcare in low-income communities, and that:
> increase household resources available for healthcare (e.g. through savings, payment and credit solutions)
> reduce health shocks that can lead to poverty or economic vulnerability after a disease or an accident (e.g. through microinsurance or other “safety nets”)
Benefits
The three finalists will be awarded with funding up to USD 700,000 and non-financial support from experts across Swiss Re and beyond.
Applications for 2023 Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award is open till January 23, 2023.
