Meet the new entrepreneurs | Green Flower Foundation

Despite the pandemic and the complicated political situation, we, along with our partners and beneficiaries have continued our activities.

As a result, the first companies supported by GFF were born at the beginning of 2022.

We would like to remind you that the foundation is supporting 11 start-ups through the means of a HUB Centre. The centre offers young entrepreneurs training programmes and personalised support for the development of theirchosen professional activities. The training includes a variety of programmes such as English, business management (accounting, budgeting, marketing, etc.) and organic horticulture.

As well as the educational support, GFF contributes up to 80% of the total start-up budget of the budding businesses. The young entrepreneurs who have just graduated, following our first project, are mainly from lower social classes and have little access to loans.

Meet the young entrepreneurs

Ethio Organic Farming is a company made up of 4 young graduates, wishing to grow and sell their organic products to the local population.

“Through our farm we want the local people to be able to eat holy products and create jobs.”

The students will soon have access to the land on which they will sow the first seeds of their future.

Family Organic Juice Bar is as its name suggests, a juice bar. This innovative business was started by 21 year old Alem Gibra Kidan.

Alem is the only person to have come up with the development of a business specialising in fresh fruit juices. It is, nonetheless a promising idea, as Ethiopians are particularly fond of juices.

Alem’s big challenge in launching his business is to secure a supply of organic products, which are scarce at the moment.
Once the HUB members’ farms are launched, it will then be possible for Alem to create partnerships with them and thus ensure the origin and quality of the products used.

Enhancing knowledge for all

In order to create a real movement around organic agriculture on a local level and to share this knowledge with the local community, we now offer trainingprogrammes to local farmers.
These training programmes take place at Bishoftu Polytechnic College (BPC) in the garden originally set up for students. You may remember that this college was already our partner in the first project which developed the first trainingprogramme in organic agriculture.

At the end of December 2021, the first training for farmers took place. It presented the basic principles of organic farming, such as irrigation, soil fertility, compost preparation, etc.

Seeds for the future

Faced with the difficulty of finding organic seeds in Ethiopia, we decided in March 2021 to produce our own seeds. To do so, we have a garden of 4’500 m2 in which we grow vegetables solely for this purpose.
The seeds are then used in the gardens of the partner school and distributed to the entrepreneurs we support or to local farmers.
Eventually, our ambition is to build a real organic seed bank for the farmers in the vicinity.