Opening of the 2023 Social Impact Startup Accelerator Training Program

Attending the event were representatives of the Ministry of Education and Training ; representatives of The Happiness Foundation under the Korean SK Group; representatives of investment funds, international organizations and members, accompanying advisors of 10 project groups in the program.

Vietnam Sunny Impact Startup (VSIS) is a social impact startup acceleration program for students of Vietnamese universities and colleges organized by The Happiness Foundation of SK Group, Korea and the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam, implemented by the Institute for Innovation and Development (IID).

Opening ceremony of the 2023 social impact startup acceleration training program, photo 1

2023 is the first year VSIS is organized in a 3-year comprehensive program between The Happiness Foundation and the Ministry of Education and Training.

This is the only accelerator program specializing in impact startups for students, with the goal of welcoming excellent project teams to participate in the annual Student Startup Idea Competition SV-Startup organized by the Ministry of Education and Training, providing in-depth knowledge and seed capital to help teams clearly develop products and bring them to market, in addition to solving prominent social and environmental issues in Vietnam.

10 student project groups selected to participate in VSIS 2023 come from the following schools: Ho Chi Minh City University of Agriculture and Forestry; Vietnam - Korea University of Information and Communications Technology; Nguyen Tat Thanh University;

University of Economics , Hue University; Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy; Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry; Phenikaa University; Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education; Hanoi University of Pharmacy; Hanoi Open University.

The VSIS 2023 program will be held from December 2023 to April 2024, including: 10 online training courses; 1 bootcamp in Hanoi including training, exchange and visits to start-up businesses;

Each group is assigned at least two mentors; 2 rounds of pitching and receives seed capital to implement the project with a value of 500 USD to 1500 USD/seed capital round.

In his opening speech, Mr. Nguyen Xuan An Viet, Deputy Director of the Department of Political Education and Student Affairs (Ministry of Education and Training) said: Implementing Decision No. 1665/QD-TTg dated October 30, 2017 of the Prime Minister on approving the Project "Supporting students to start a business until 2025" (Project 1665), every year, the Ministry of Education and Training organizes the "National Student Startup Day" (SV_STARTUP) and the "Students with Startup Ideas" Contest.

From the early days, the number of participating projects was limited and the quality was not high, but in recent years the number of student start-up projects has increased in quantity, most of the projects have increasingly high scientific and technological content.

After 5 times of organization, the Ministry of Education and Training has received nearly 1,670 projects from training institutions and more than 900 projects from high schools and middle schools nationwide.

70% of projects already have products and 30% of projects are ideas or products at the trial production level.

Currently, many student projects have been established as businesses or acquired by large enterprises to put into mass production.

Some projects of higher education institutions have been transferred to the community, forming start-up projects to support livelihoods and socio-economic development for localities.

However, the implementation of the project in schools still has many limitations, especially the investment funding for start-up activities in training institutions is not provided regularly but mainly according to activities, so it is very difficult to build and plan.

“Therefore, the proposal of Sunny Group and The Happiness Foundation to implement the project “Accelerating social impact startups: Supporting students in developing social impact startup projects after the National Student Startup Festival” is appropriate to the context and consistent with the goal of promoting student entrepreneurship, equipping students with knowledge and skills in entrepreneurship in the field of social impact businesses; Supporting student groups to complete and realize startup projects towards creating social impact businesses”, said Mr. Nguyen Xuan An Viet.

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