Aspect’s Student Accelerator Programme (ASAP) brings together a unique yet like-minded community of student entrepreneurs who are building socially impactful and responsible scalable businesses. All participants are contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, either through the socially-responsible running of the business (data ethics/transparency of the supply chain/gender parity) and/or the measurable social/environmental impact created through the business idea.
Below are links to 2021 outputs, with more updates to follow soon.
ASAP Alumni Drop-in sessions
An important asset of Aspect Accelerator is its Alumni Network. Alumni Activities are fundamental to strengthening the network and drop-in sessions are proving to be a useful part of our on-going support and learning.
So far there have been six alumni sessions summarised here where founders were able to simulate a “virtual board” and run through business and leadership challenges. Peer Support Sessions take place by zoom every two weeks to help each other tackle challenges and constraints that our startups are encountering. In each session, beforehand challenges are gathered. During the session, the founder contextualizes the constrain they are undergoing and all the other founders write possible solutions on a virtual board.
Mentorship Toolkit
This Mentorship toolkit utilises primary and secondary data from the pilot mentorship programmes to provide guidance on best practices around running mentorship programmes. Following the pilot programs, the ASAP team collated feedback from mentor interviews, cohort member surveys, and combined this with research on effective mentorship programs to create this toolkit.
The toolkit is structured across the key stages of a mentorship program which aims to first provide the lessons learnt from running previous mentorship programmes. Next it aims to provide tactics for preparation, and best practices in each stage. Finally, research-driven recommendations are provided, as well as useful resources to effectively guide the programme coordinator into creating a bespoke mentorship programme.
Key sections of the report include: –
Background and review of pilot programmes
Pre-programme preparation
Selection and Matching process
Onboarding and Mentor/Mentee Community
Post Mentorship Programme Transition
The Power of Social Business Podcast
This podcast focuses on the unique journey of social entrepreneurs and the evolution of their businesses. We delve into how they designed and scaled their startups uniquely for purpose and profit, how they integrate social science research, their wider impact, and the advice they would give to early-stage social venture founders and the universities that support them. The Power of Social Business is sponsored by the ASPECT network of social sciences and hosted by Kajal Sanghrajka.
The insider’s view from the Aspect Student Accelearator Programme
This interactive session looks at how the social entrepreneurs of ASAP were able to get their first paying customer thanks to various resources offered
during the programme (Mentorship, Bootcamps, Stipend, Alumni Support sessions etc). Sharing their journey and progress as a result of the accelerator and giving advice to future candidates while walking university staff through the advantages of the resources of ASPECT.
ASAP Innovation Blueprint 2.0
The ASAP 2.0 Innovation project was put in place to act on post-program findings from our cohort and ASAP community to enable quicker and more effective commercialisation support of early stage social ventures on future ASAP programs.
The output of the project is the Innovation Blueprint, which brings together key results achieved during the ASAP programme, and includes a more robust impact framework to guide both strategy and funding to the places of highest impact. The Blueprint will leave ASAP with a stronger foundation for sustainable growth and world-class support for early stage social entrepreneurs.
For more information about ASAP please click here
