Leadership & Entrepreneurship

Leadership and Entrepreneurship

Leadership and entrepreneurship hold immense value for nurses and midwives beyond clinical roles. Leadership skills enable them to guide teams, advocate for patients, and drive innovation in healthcare settings. Entrepreneurship equips them to identify unmet needs, efficiently and effectively develop solutions, and contribute to healthcare startups or initiatives. Both leadership and entrepreneurship empower nurses and midwives to influence policy, improve patient outcomes, and shape the future of healthcare.

• Promotion through mentorship, webinars, microfinance, grants, and recruitment
• 2 Day workshops given in Uganda, Botswana, Zimbabwe, plus 1 to 1 Virtual sessions with Malawi, Kenya for more than 500 nurses and midwives and University and College students
• Business Modeling and Financial Literacy
• Encouraging initiation of health care ventures
• Vaka Start-Up Accelerator Program
• Grey Nurses Connect Community being constructed for nurses transitioning to retirement or who are retired.

Vaka Start-Up Accelerator Program

Are you ready to revolutionize Africa’s Healthcare landscape and address the social determinants of health? The Vaka Health Foundation invites you to join our elite Start-Up Accelerator Program, designed to empower bold and innovative ideas that will tackle Africa’s health challenges head-on.

As a social enterprise with a mission to improve health outcomes across Africa, Vaka is committed to implementing homegrown solutions. Our focus spans empowering nurses through education and training, addressing poverty, improving agriculture and food (preventative health), enhancing access to healthcare, energy, water, and education.

Every Year in November/December, we host a pitch event for our Start-Up Accelerator Program, and we want to hear from you! In 2023 the anticipated dates for the program is:

November 20-22 (incl) Uganda.
November 24 -28 (incl) Zimbabwe.
November 29- Dec 1 (incl) Botswana

If your idea is ready for implementation or has been implemented within the last 2 years, and falls under one of the following categories:

Health Services
Agriculture/Food/Water.
Energy/Manufacturing/Mining

We especially welcome ideas that leverage technology to enhance operational efficiency, as well as those with young women and health workers as team members or founders.

To apply, submit a concise one-page concept note and an initial compelling pitch deck with no more than 10 slides to https://bit.ly/vhfstartupaccelerator by September 30 every year. Our team will review submissions and shortlist projects. Shortlisted projects will be invited to submit a detailed pitch through a template to be shared. These projects will then be invited to the one-hour weekly support webinars. Vaka will be running suite of one-hour webinars to assist in preparation, beginning in the first week of October. In these we will review developing the Value proposition, developing the Business Canvas Model, as well as refining your own Pitch Deck in preparation for the Pitch Conferences in December at venues and dates to be advised.

Your pitch submission should include:

a. Name of project/startup.
b. The problem/gap that your solution addresses
c. The solution you are offering
d. Your execution plan, including goals, targets, and strategies
e. Budget and timeline required to achieve your vision
f. Information about your team members and their skills

For any inquiries or clarifications, feel free to reach out to vakaafya@vakahealthfoundation.org.

If you possess a bold and transformative idea that can make a real impact on Africa’s health landscape, we welcome you to join Vaka’s next-generation Start-Up Accelerator Program. Apply today and be the change our continent needs! Together, we can shape a healthier future for all Africans. Visit our website at www.vakahealthfoundation.org to learn more about our mission and the work we do. This is an elite start-up empowerment intervention backed by our online (XMarkets), we seek to find promising ideas and support with resources for ideation to execution strategies, seed funding, facilitate cross border exchange within ECSACONM region and cross pollination of ideas and facilitate “twinning” with entrepreneurs in the Diaspora wishing to invest in Africa.

Join us on this journey of transformation and make a difference. Apply now and let your vision soar with Vaka Health Foundation’s Start-Up Accelerator Program.