The Idea | Home | Volunteer Consultants | Prospective Businesses | About Us | Results | Case Studies | FAQs | Gallery | Contact Us | Apply to Grow | FORUM | Donate | News

Grow’s aim is to enable connections to facilitate the exchange of knowledge. Leveraging mobile and internet allows us to speed up this process - to establish the opportunity for business professionals across the globe to collaborate and learn from each other, without the burden of heavy time commitments or cost.  Our vision is really to initiate a movement - a self-perpetuating community and ideas exchange to aid more effective business practice in the developing world.

Grow currently operates in Africa. Africa has an extensive small and medium enterprise (SMEs) sector and these growing businesses are a major source of job creation and income for poorer communities. For example in Uganda, where Grow is initially focused, SMEs contribute 75% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Businesses such as these are key to the economic growth of the continent. However, SMEs are faced with unique challenges which threaten their contribution to their country’s economy - for example, inadequate technical and managerial skills, low standards for local products, lack of information for business start-ups and lack of vision and experience. Working together collaboratively Grow consultants and businesses find ways to combat some of these challenges. In combining the broader experience of Grow consultants with the local understanding of the business contacts, logical, pragmatic solutions  are reached. To find out more, visit our case studies.


 

theideapic5

There has been a lot in the news recently about overseas aid budgets, at a time of great squeeze on other areas of spending by governments. Here is a new extremely cost effective approach to help entrepreneurs in developing countries to learn how to help themselves, at 3% of the cost of conventional methods.

Most economic development assistance has focused on the supply of capital (e.g. micro finance) rather than innovation. This is largely due to the high cost of development consultants. Grow Movement solves this by using free labour from highly skilled remote volunteers anywhere in the world with internet and phone access. These volunteers donate 2 hours of their time a week ensuring an ultra low cost base to help developing country entrepreneurs relieve poverty and create employment.

Grow Movement is managed by Violet Busingye, from Uganda, and was founded in 2009 by Chris Coghlan. With 120 remote volunteer consultants in 29 countries, operating mainly in Uganda but also Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Rwanda. Its first 40 projects helped create 100 jobs at thirty times less cost than conventional expatriate development consultants.