Activate Your Ideas

Have you got an idea that could reduce greenhouse gases through developing ground-breaking technology? Could you reduce food waste by bringing farm excess to market? Shift the gender parity in the engineering sector by training women and girls? These are just a tiny fraction of some of the world-changing ideas currently being tackled by winners of our Unilever Young Entrepreneur Awards.

The entrepreneurial mindset of youth is continually inspirational. And the truth is that many of the boldest and brightest ideas on how to tackle the world’s challenges come from young social entrepreneurs. They are the changemakers who are challenging ‘business as usual’, and who are the future of sustainability. They, and I with them, are always asking – how can we do more? How can we go faster? What can we do to really make an impact and drive change at scale? I see a huge opportunity in bringing together the agility of entrepreneurs with the reach of big business, to revolutionise how we partner and collaborate. To really unlock entrepreneurial talent and unleash power towards tackling the SDGs.

That’s why five years ago, alongside the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and Ashoka, we started the Unilever Young Entrepreneur Awards, to recognise, support and reward brilliant young innovators tackling the planet’s biggest environmental and social challenges, and to help them achieve scale for impact.

Since the launch of the Awards in 2013, we’ve reached over 3500 inspiring young sustainability entrepreneurs and their organisations, and provided funding and tailored business mentoring and support to 29 winners. From simple solutions with far reaching impacts for child nutrition, to tackling the sanitation crisis, these enterprises are leading the way to a more sustainable future. The 2018 Unilever Young Entrepreneur Awards are open for entries until the 29th June: if you’ve got an idea which is taking on our world’s challenges, you can find out more and apply here.

And now for the first time, we are building a community from all the people who have engaged with the awards, working with them to understand what they need from each other, and where businesses such as ours can add value to a community of young entrepreneurs – whether that’s setting up skills exchange, brokering contacts or simply providing the space for like-minded individuals to convene. It’s an experiment of our own to create a collective, and you can help us shape what it looks like by joining here.

Of course, not everyone wants to act on their own ideas, and you certainly don’t have to be running your own business to make a difference. We know that lots of small actions add up to a big impact, and so we have created the Take Action hub – a dedicated space on Unilever.com where you can go and find ways to take action to make a difference, whether you have two minutes, two hours, or two weeks to spare. The hub brings together many different initiatives from our brands and partners, from signing a pledge to campaign for social change, volunteering to help a community or bringing your ides to transform business. You can visit the hub and take your own actions here. 

As Unilever, I see our role as supporter, champion, convenor and community builder of young social entrepreneurs. All of these initiatives contribute to this, and I am looking forward to growing them further over the coming months. It’s an exciting place to be. Simply, it’s creating the future.

Enter the Unilever Young Entrepreneur Awards before 29th June

Join the Unilever Entrepreneur Network