FYSE announced 100 most inspiring young entrepreneurs and social Changemakers in Asia Pacific!

Nov. 9, 2009 - PRLog -- 2009-11-10; Tuesday. Hong Kong. Irfan Alam pioneered a social venture that increases incomes for thousands of rickshaw drivers; he is preparing to list the venture on the stock exchange by 2012. Casey Wilson launched the first peer-to-peer micro-finance lending platform for rural farmers in China, enabling donors to make life-changing loans for an entrepreneur in rural China. Mathews Jose only started BlueLabs Technology Solutions in 2008, yet it is already one of the emerging leaders in the Indian IT services sector with 130 employees. Young entrepreneurs and social Changemakers are realizing their entrepreneurial dreams all around Asia.  

The Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship (FYSE) announced today 100 inspiring young entrepreneurs and social Changemakers from 10 countries in Asia Pacific that have been selected for the annual Paragon fellowship (previously Asia Pacific Future 100), a Paragon being a model of excellence for others to aspire towards.

As many countries struggle to create enough jobs for young people, youth entrepreneurship has emerged as an attractive alternative to widespread unemployment, as it integrates unemployed youth into the labor market and tackles poverty through the creation of jobs.
In order to support young entrepreneurs who have dared to stride out, FYSE selects 100 young entrepreneurs and social Changemakers annually for a one-year fellowship in which they benefit from regional networking, mentorship from an extensive network of professionals and entrepreneurs, capacity building and access to finance. To inspire more young people FYSE will profile Paragon fellows widely through an extensive network of more than 50 partners in Asia Pacific and multiple online channels as positive role models in order to inspire more young people to consider entrepreneurship as a career choice. The website will not only provide young people with inspirational role models, but also provide them with information on how to take the next step towards turning their ideas into reality.

“We need to provide more young successful entrepreneurs as positive role models to our youth in order to inspire them to take actions. Many young people in Asia Pacific dream of being an entrepreneur, but they hesitate to take action because they don’t know any young entrepreneurs who have already succeeded in doing so. The Paragon fellowship aims to change that”, says Ms Andrea Krause, Executive Director of FYSE. “While in Europe and the US young social Changemakers and entrepreneurs are celebrated in the media and society, we need to move forward in Asia to celebrate and support our young entrepreneurs, as they can play a tremendous role in creating jobs and in contributing significantly to the economic and social development of our countries.”

This years fellows represent 10 countries including India, Indonesia, China, Pakistan, Nepal and Singapore and an astonishing 65 percent off the fellows started social ventures or NGOs. As more and more young people want to use their education to make a difference in their society, starting a social venture or NGO enables them to tackle challenges they are passionate about with a business mind. “I am an entrepreneur because I saw a social need that had to be addressed immediately and I felt that I could adequately address it by taking it up institutionally”, says Indian Piyush Tewari founder of the Save Life Foundation.  Ejaj Ahmad, founder of the Bangladesh Youth Leadership Centre agrees, “I am an entrepreneur because I wanted to change my society and for me social entrepreneurship provided the perfect platform.”

The full profiles of all fellows are available at http://www.paragon100.asia

About the Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship
The Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship (FYSE) is a regional organization inspiring and empowering young people to make innovative suggestions and actions to create positive change and real impact in their communities, their countries and Asia. FYSE’s major initiative is the Paragon fellowship, the annual program for young social Changemakers and entrepreneurs from Asia Pacifc.  
Vision: Asia’s young people are inspired and empowered to change their community for good.

If you’d like more information about this program and the topic please contact Ms Andrea Krause at +852 8170 3587 or email andrea@fyse.org.

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FYSE focuses on building an entrepreneurial environment for young people through the Future 100 as a regional youth entrepreneurship campaign.
Aim: to raise awareness of entrepreneurship among young people and to inspire them to become entrepreneurs.