Social entrepreneurs on a mission

Two young students, one great mission: support social entrepreneurs  around the world. Destination Changemakers is a visionary project conceived by Jonas Guyot and  Matthieu Dardaillon, two students from a  prestigious  French business school (ESCP Europe), willing to open themselves to different models of enterprises than the traditional one. Passionate about social entrepreneurship and social innovation, they decide to go backpacking around the world to support social entrepreneurs and get the inspiration to become changemakers themselves.

The project, which will last three years, is structured in three phases: preparation, mission and sharing of experience.

During the first phase (January 2011-August 2012) the two young innovators read a lot about social business, social development and microfinance, met many inspiring social entrepreneurs, to understand the reasons of their success and know more about the social entrepreneurship sector, and participated to many conferences and events in areas related to their project. 

Now  Jonas and Matthieu are on a mission abroad (phase two) to support three  local entrepreneurs in the Philippines, India and  Senegal-each mission has a duration of three months. They are going to help local entrepreneurs  to scale up their business. This is the core part of the project . As a matter of fact these are highly committed entrepreneurs with innovative ideas to solve urgent social needs, but who lack the business skills to scale up their business. Jonas and Matthieu will accompany them to benefit from Ashoka/Skoll Foundation/Schwab Foundation support. Their role will therefore be to act as facilitators, in order to create partnerships between social enterprises and large companies. The areas in which the two young entrepreneurs have decided  to focus are food and water, today’s most urgent social needs. 

The project will not only help promising entrepreneurs around the world, but will also give the opportunity to find out innovations to fight poverty that could be adapted in France. It  will also teach Jonas and Matthieu how to become changemakers themselves. 

Once they come back from their missions the project is not finished: the third phase,  the sharing of experiences will take place. Destination Changemakers is more than a project, it is  a movement that wants to inspire a new generation of changemakers. This is probably the most important phase of the project: what counts is the impact that these two young entrepreneurs  will have on other people.

As the project has a limited duration – three years- the idea is to create an association to continue the work made once the missions are ended. 

Jonas and Matthieu’s travel around the world will be covered by French media – French radio Le Mouv’ will follow the project around the world – and they will regularly update their blog. 

The project is financed through the crowdfunding service Ulule,  and can count on a series of high level partners, such as Make Sense, a global community (400 young people in more than 20 countries)  which challenges people for social business, danone.communities, Europ Assistnace, Ashoka, Grameen Crédit Agricole , Masalina Foundation and many more.