A collaboration between Ashoka, Nordea and Accenture
In 2019, the Changemakers Accelerator supported innovative Nordic Social Entrepreneurs working towards the biggest social challenges the Nordics face today, within the fields of climate action and circularity.
Collaboration among diverse actors is key to innovation and impact and I am very excited about developing the Changemaker Accelerator with this group of truly engaged partners and fantastic entrepreneurs.
Jennie Perzon
Accenture
Today, we face many challenges and I believe that we need impact entrepreneurs to solve societal issues. But they can’t succeed alone. That is why we have engaged with Ashoka and Accenture. We partnered up to accelerate entrepreneurship in the Nordics.
Erik Feldt
Nordea
Climate action and circularity
The purpose of the program was to support the social entrepreneurs to scale the impact of their social and environmentally sustainable initiatives and create long-lasting and systemic change.
Changemakers Team
The Changemakers Accelerator supports innovative Nordic Social Entrepreneurs working towards the biggest social challenges the Nordics face today, within the fields of climate action and circularity. The purpose of the program is to support the social entrepreneurs to scale the impact of their social and environmentally sustainable initiatives and create long-lasting and systemic change. Watch the video to learn more.
Watching list
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Changemakers Team
The Changemakers Accelerator supports innovative Nordic Social Entrepreneurs working towards the biggest social challenges the Nordics face today, within the fields of climate action and circularity. The purpose of the program is to support the social entrepreneurs to scale the impact of their social and environmentally sustainable initiatives and create long-lasting and systemic change. Watch the video to learn more.
Participants of the Changemaker Accelerator program
Anantha is a social entrepreneur that identifies and combines innovative solutions to create sustainable food systems.
The Initiative
Nature Preserve is a sustainable initiative that encourages and inspires societies to preserve food and fight against food waste with innovative solutions. They develop both food processing technologies and food products to minimize waste and maximize your access to healthy food products.
Food waste occurs in random quantities at random points in the farm-to-retail value chain. Up until now, this decentralized problem had a centralized and inefficient food processing solution, with produce having to be transported hundreds of kilometers to large processing plants.
Nature Preserve is miniaturizing the processing plant to accelerate and improve its functions along the food supply chain while creating 100% natural, shelf-stable and healthy ingredients. The company is developing its mobile solution to process food surplus worldwide. Nature Preserve has gauged the market acceptance of upcycled ingredients through their LOVI smoothies line.
Systems Change Strategy
Nature Preserve’s objective is to impact the Danish fruit and vegetable value chain by promoting better use of fruits and vegetables, better surplus management
and more sustainable choices, which would lead to a positive impact on the
environment, as well as to healthier consumers.
Their ambition is to reduce the fruit and vegetable waste by 25% within 5 years in Denmark.
Get engaged!
Nature Preserve is looking for investment and support for their branding, marketing, and communication efforts. If you want to engage with them, contact Anantha.
Ann has a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and ecology, a Master's Degree in Sustainable Development and is educated as a mental coach. She personally suffered from “climate anxiety” which inspired her to develop a method with effective mental tools to alleviate climate anxiety that now is used in BeChange.
The Initiative
BeChange is a powerful innovation that almost HALVES individual carbon emissions in the shortest possible time (3,5 months). It is a method that uniquely combines practical and mental training in a complete solution that helps people lead more sustainable lives and reduce their emissions.
Systems Change Strategy
BeChange wants to make ”sustainable living knowledge” a natural part in society and integrated in daily life systems, such as work and education, so that 20% of the Swedish population will - by the end of 2027 - know and follow their footprint and know how to keep it at a sustainable level or decrease it.
Get engaged!
BeChange is looking for a researcher on behavioural change and mental well-being (climate psychology) in correlation to emissions data (climate change).
BeChange is also looking for investors and/or grants (500 000 SEK now to complete the digital version of BeChange, 2,4M SEK in the autumn to execute their sales strategy and 2,1M SEK in 2021 to manage their cashflow and start preparing for their global expansion).
Christian holds a Masters in philosophy and business, as well as being an Army Officer. He is a serial-entrepreneur who loves to create, preferably businesses who make an impact in the world.
The Initiative
Goodwings is a hotel booking platform with impact as its DNA and with the ambition of transforming the social and environmental footprint of travel.
Founded in Denmark but born global, with its partnership-based business model Goodwings is now working closely with more than 140 nonprofits in 40 countries and having the 17 Sustainable Development Goals as its framework.
Systems Change Strategy
Goodwings works towards unlocking sufficient sources of funding to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which will lead to a sustainable future for people and planet.
Get engaged!
Goodwings has been heavily affected by the travel ban emerging from the Covid-19 crisis. They are currently looking at alternative financing and revenue sources. If you want to engage with them, contact Christian.
Harri is planting his apple tree in form of sustainable services and technology, hoping it will make a difference in the lives of his children.
The Initiative
Jaaxx is building the alternative to the throw away society by enabling easy sustainable everyday life – as a service.
With circular economy in mind, Jaaxx has created an affordable, easy to use and accessible 24/7 consumer equipment rental service. The company collaborates with progressive real-estate and housing providers that support sustainable daily life of their end-customers.
Systems Change Strategy
Jaaxx works towards expanding their service into a full-flexed platform complementing existing value chains and providing a sustainable community tool-box by adding their existing other services such as ride-sharing (equipment home delivery), community tasks and third party repair services.
Their long-term goal is to see 99% of EU consumers using electronic consumer products as a service (rental, leasing, repair), instead of the current trend of purchasing these products (15% annual increase 2013-2016 in the EU market), while many usable products are being thrown away or stored.
Get engaged!
Jaaxx is looking for funding for integrating their new platform and expanding outside Finland. If you want to engage with them, contact Harri.
Wilhelm is a serial entrepreneur with multiple features in Forbes, The Independent, BBC and Moneyweek. He is passionate about applying new technologies to solve major global challenges with ease.
Jessica is a lawyer dedicated full-time to fighting plastic waste around the world with Empower. With a background in law firms and multinational companies, she thrives in innovative and challenging environments.
The Initiative
Founded in 2018, Empower has an objective to create a disruptive brand new global ecosystem for plastic waste to challenge one of the greatest threats to our planet, while making real social impact and laying the basis for a circular economy.
Through tokenized transactions, the Empower Platform incentivises crowdsourced plastic waste collections, and facilitates decentralized waste management on a global scale.
Empower is addressing a structural problem in the 300-billion-dollar plastic waste industry. They aim at enhancing transparency in waste management, sorting and recycling. Through supply chains tracking and digital inventories, they redesign the plastic waste flows and connect all the value chain stakeholders for a fully circular economy.
The long-term goal is to create a digital ecosystem for recycled plastic with transparency and traceability, where plastic waste is ensured to end up where it has the highest value, therefore reducing the amount of plastic in our environment.
Get engaged!
Empower is looking for global strategic partners (major buyers of recycled plastic, major drivers for a circular economy) and experts in several areas (financial, legal, waste management, supply chain and packaging) for their High-Level Advisory Board.
Empower is also aiming at raising 5 million euros in their next investment round. If you want to engage with them, contact Wilhelm.
Lina is a social entrepreneur passionated about the environment and childrens rights. As a trained printmaking artist and with a bachelor in business economics she combines creativity, design and business in everything she puts her hand on. Always with the environment top of mind.
The Initiative
We Unite Design's purpose is to relocate leftover furniture, bringing together those who are in possession of used functional and good quality furniture and those who need it.
This relocation of goods and the value they possess creates both environmental impact by extending the products life, and social impact by having different parts of the society working together.
Systems Change Strategy
We Unite Design is working on the Swedish office furniture management system, so that all functional, clean and working furniture is redistributed back into the system and used over and over again, which will lead to prolonged technical life of the furniture and reduced CO2 emissions.
We Unite Design’s ultimate goal is achieving a completely circular system for office furniture with suppliers in each part of the chain, so that no furniture becomes waste.
Get engaged!
We Unite Design is looking for partnerships with companies engaged in the commercial real estate market and with companies that work with furniture in any way. We Unite Design is also looking for financial and/or intellectual support in building a B2B platform.
With backgrounds from property development, architecture and construction, Olav Westgaard Sunde, Lasse Kilvær and Martin S. Eid have joined forces to change the building industry with a circular take on material resources and ecosmart asset management.
The Initiative
Resirqel is Norway’s only company specialized in the re-use of building components.
From automating the surveys of existing property, consulting, and planning, to hands-on disassembling, trading in surplus and re-use materials, documenting immediate CO2 and waste reductions, advising and delivering reports on sound reuse for the national building authorities and even delivering complete re-used buildings and contracts, Resirqel is working all angles to jump start a dead circular building industry on the Scandinavian Peninsula.
In 2019 only, Resirqel surveyed 20 properties of about 200.000 m2 ready for demolition - and delivered reused building products to countless projects.
Systems Change Strategy
The Norwegian construction sector produces 1.8 million tonnes of waste every year, much of which could technically be reused. Resirqel and their allies are working towards a future where functional components are preserved, redocumented, and redistributed, and where all buildings must be designed with reuse in mind, as part of a circular system.
To get there, they need more physical reuse projects today, in order to build experience and awareness within the industry, and in society as a whole. At the same time, research, development and the active dissemination of knowledge, helps build a wave of impact much larger than Resirqel themselves.
Resirqel has been able to take a leading role in developing a sustainable ecosystem while delivering positive economic results - as such can be seen as an inspiration and a role model for new businesses.
Get engaged!
Resirqel is looking to involve new partners and stakeholders in their missions. If you want to engage with them, contact Martin.
Niklas is motivated by bringing different stakeholders together to solve the biggest challenge of our time: climate change. We need a multi-stakeholder approach that involves businesses, civil society, politicians and most importantly people. His passion is to get social movements and businesses together to work towards common goals.
The Initiative
Compensate is a non-profit organization set out to bring people and companies together to stop climate change. They work with companies to offer their customers a convenient, trusted and effective way to offset the emissions caused by their purchases.
Choosing to offset your carbon emissions should be as easy as paying your VAT. Compensate makes consuming products that have caused emissions more expensive and thus drives to emission cuts.
Systems Change Strategy
Compensate is working towards changing the relationships, transparency and flow information between offset service providers, B2C-companies, data aggregators and consumers, which will lead to consumers being more aware of the climate impact of their choice and make choosing climate friendly options easier.
Compensate’s goal is that consumers will have enough information to understand and decrease their individual carbon footprint by choosing more sustainable alternatives, as well as convenient means to contribute individually to offset their carbon emissions.
Get engaged!
Compensate is always looking for businesses or other organizations who wish to join in their vision. If you want to engage with them, contact Niklas.
Ylva is a social entrepreneur with a degree in environmental science and a long background in the field of mobility. Impact is Ylva’s strongest driving force and the best way to motivate herself for long term work.
The possibility to make impact gives Ylva strength and hope for the future. It's her injection against climate resignation.
The Initiative
PlanM helps property owners reducing fossil-based travel by making walk, cycle, use public transport or share a car as easy as driving your own car, with a vision of reducing car dependency in cities.
Systems Change Strategy
Currently, almost 80% of all properties are planned and built with a focus on cars. PlanM works towards setting limits for fossil-fueled car traffic movement to and from properties, in order to switch from car-focused planning to a mixed travel mode focus.
Until 2030 Plan M wants to support 20 progressive real estate companies in Skåne to set goals for traffic reduction to and from their properties.
Get engaged!
PlanM is looking for the following type of support:
An economic adviser/company developer
A lawyer/jurisconsult that can carry out a regulatory overview in order to identify and assess policy/regulatory items that are relevant or likely to impact Plan M’s work
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