The 15 best agrarian businesses of the SEED project have been selected
Ukraine needs agrarians. This is the slogan of the SEED educational project of the UN Global Compact Network Ukraine. Its purpose is to support small Ukrainian agribusiness. Entrepreneurs in regions who create jobs for themselves, their families, and communities often lack up-to-date knowledge of business processes and tools. Having received financial support from PepsiCo in Ukraine and the PepsiCo Foundation, the UN Global Compact team in Ukraine gathered a team of mentors and lecturers who helped to raise the project participants' business ideas to a new level.
150 participants from all over Ukraine were selected for the SEED program. The condition for participation is to introduce the idea of your agribusiness — either one that is already operating on the market, or one that is at the development stage. SEED participants underwent a month of interactive training with experienced specialists. They studied the basics of project management, communications, investing, financial and legal aspects of business. To examine their ideas more deeply, the participants had individual mentoring sessions with experts.
The training ended with the final pitching of the best projects. According to its results, 15 participants received grants from the PepsiCo Foundation, MHP, Syngenta in Ukraine, and the UN Global Compact Network Ukraine. Agrarians will be able to use the funds for their companies' development.
The preservation and well-being of the country is a common cause. The task of entrepreneurs now is to ensure Ukraine’s economic performance. As an organization that teaches businesses to work sustainably for the future, we set ourselves the aim of increasing the competitiveness of Ukrainian agrarians and giving impetus to the development and search for innovative solutions. Because it is the modernization of the Ukrainian agricultural sector that will allow it to overcome today's extremely difficult challenges
SEED is not just about seed literally, which will grow and make a harvest. The program’s name also embodies the principles of sustainable business, which the UN Global Compact Network Ukraine’s team shared with the project participants, namely
Each of the winning projects has a component of sustainable development, which today is a prerequisite for business growth and proves its responsibility to society.
The full-scale invasion of Russia caused huge losses to Ukrainian business, and in particular to the companies of many project participants. But the spirit of Ukrainians is invincible. They strive to continue working and developing their community. We share the stories of the winners of the SEED competition.
