Join us in equal partnership!

Action10 offers business loans to social entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan African countries.
We collaborate with HR&S, which offers tools to address the challenges identified by the entrepreneur.

WHAT HAPPENS WITH YOUR DONATION?

HR&S carefully selects social entrepreneurs eligible for the Action10 business loans. The loan-takers become members of our local HR&S Support Centers. HR&S offers training, financial auditing, expert advice, network, and physical infrastructure. The businesses are continuously reviewed and strengthened.

Social enterprises provide products and services that improve livelihoods for poor people. They often target the extremely poor people and these are the most difficult businesses to manage while they are also generating the highest social impact.

When a social enterprise shows measurable results they are posted on the ActionInvest crowd-funding site.

You may want to choose a specific social enterprise to support, OR choose to support our programme in general and thereby allow HR&S to assess for which enterprise your support is needed the most.

Please also choose how much you want to support with.

The support can be a one-time donation or a monthly contribution.

Action10 transfers 95% of the donated amount to one of the HR&S Support Centres.

The funds are given out as business loans to social enterprises. We target social good and sustainability.

The loan is repaid to the local Support Centre with 10% interest and the loan is reinvested in the scaling-up of the social enterprise or in a new business. Thereafter the funds are reinvested again and again.

As a result of the harsh realities, corruption being a social norm, lack of social security, and lack of rule-of-law at the locations where we operate, the loans are sometimes not paid back fully, at all or in time. We can ensure you though, that the loans are paid back to the highest level possible. If loans are not paid back fully, the amount usually increases as the partnership deepens and mindsets change.

The income, the 10 % interest, is used to empower the local Support Centres.

Under-served communities do not benefit from social security or rule-of-law.

HR&S has developed practical strategies, tools and resources to handle the challenges in under-served communities. HR&S registers local branches for which local teams are carefully selected and trained on the HR&S tools and strategies. The local branches act as Support Centres and offer business loans, training, expert advice, networking, and auditing to local social entrepreneurs.

The social entrepreneurs that we partner with are carefully selected to be agencies for change, carry intrinsic motivation, have business ideas with the potential to generate profit while at the same time offer social good, and value accountability, truth and trust.

BUSINESS LOANS – HOW THEY WORK

Action10 offers, through Human Rights and Science (HR&S), business loans to local social enterprises in Sub-Saharan African countries where HR&S has established HR&S Support Centres.

This is how the business loans work:

• HR&S offers 10h webinars on social enterprising, sustainability and accountability. The participants receive a Certificate if they pass the exam after the webinar.
• Social entrepreneurs with certificates from HR&S webinars are welcome to present their social business ideas to HR&S. Ambitions, outcome challenges and how outcome challenges are address is discussed firmly with HR&S. If the business idea is sound, the entrepreneur is driven by intrinsic motivation, is an agency for change, and value accountability is turth and trust, and if HR&S is able to address and solve the outcome challenges, then the social entrepreneur and HR&S may agree to become partners.
• Agreed social entrepreneurs are offered a loan with 10% annual interest and to become members of the Support Centre, EUR 50 per year. Members benefit from local training, international coaching, expert advise, networking, and annual auditing.
• The income generated locally co-funds the running of the Support Centre.
• The first loan is small, around € 1,000 and when it is paid back with interest, the loan-taker is eligible for the second loan, maybe twice as large. This procedure is repeated until the business in profitable and self-sustained. Thus the relation is built slowly but firmly while trust and equal partnership is developed, and the challenges facing the social entrepreneur are addressed together.
• The paid back capital is accounted for at the HR&S branch local bank account and is re-invested in order to scale-up the on-going partner business or to start or scale up a new business. The capital is raised through donations due to the inherent financial risk.

WHY LOANS, AND NOT DONATIONS?

The purpose with giving loans and not donations, while solving the challenges facing start-ups in Sub-Saharan African countries, is to conclude the aid dependency.