Tobolsk hosted the final session of the Growth Formula business accelerator program
22 june 2021
Tyumen Oblast’s Tobolsk hosted the final intensive training session of the Growth Formula business accelerator program for social entrepreneurs, jointly organized by the Our Future Foundation and by SIBUR.
The session was attended by 23 social entrepreneurs who develop their businesses in 8 Russian cities: Tobolsk, Dzerzhinsk, Nizhnevartovsk, Nyagan, Pyt-Yakh, Noyabrsk, Gubkinsky, and Muravlenko. The session brought together heads of business entities focusing on improving the living standards, developing the urban environment, and creating jobs for members of socially disadvantaged groups.
During the three-day intensive course, the attending social entrepreneurs learned how to take their businesses to the next level, how to stay motivated if you are a business leader, studied new approaches to developing services and products, and learned how to measure and plan the social impact of their activities. The curse was facilitated by Pavel Mikhailov and Evgeny Tsarkov, two experienced trackers and entrepreneurs with vast experience in consulting businesses on matters of marketing and management.
Social entrepreneurs are idea-driven. Their desire to make money is not their overarching motivation and they are therefore prepared to learn and get their arms around ingenious business approaches in order to deal with social issues in an effective manner, Natalia Zvereva, Director of the Our Future Foundation, noted. This is what makes the Growth Formula so attractive and engaging: our full-time courses bring people who are truly motivated, and over the course’s three days they are able to get a lot of new knowledge and meet new people, so that they can then continue working on their projects under the guidance of their personal mentors. By the end of the year, we are going to take stock of our program and identify the most successful cases.
The Growth Formula acceleration program has been developed and implemented with the needs of actively working social entrepreneurs in mind thanks to a partnership between Our Future, the Foundation for Regional Social Programs, and SIBUR as part of the latter’s Formula for Good Deeds social investment program. This event is a follow-on to the PROCity program which has been running in Tobolsk since 2019 with SIBUR’s support.
The Growth Formula facilitates rapid and successful development of social entrepreneurs’ businesses. Its intensive educational courses have been conducted since 2018 and have already been hosted by 4 regions: Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Astrakhan and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug – Yugra.
Social entrepreneurs are the ones driving positive changes in their cities. SIBUR's support for social entrepreneurship is an opportunity to help improve the quality of life in the regions where it has operations. The intensive course in Tobolsk will help the program’s participants upgrade a whole set of entrepreneurial skills under the guidance of experienced mentors and share their experience with peers in order to be better prepared to tackle their businesses’ challenges, Elena Belskaya, Head of Government Relations at ZapSibNeftekhim LLC, said.
In terms of helping me with my development as an entrepreneur, taking part in the accelerator program was one of the best decisions I had made. It is a top-notch project capable of producing great results. For me, this was an opportunity to grow both professionally and personally. The program is well noted for its sweeping scope and utility, while the instructors and mentors are true professionals who always stay in touch. Right away, we were offered to try and use the very valuable material we had just been given in real practice applying it to the realities of our own businesses. Being able to meet other entrepreneurs from our region and form other cities is yet another important resource that is extremely valuable to have for sharing one’s experience and motivation, Gulnara Musina, a participant of the Growth Formula program, commented.
I found the session’s format to be very interesting. It was a mix of theory, practice, and business games. It was very exciting to see the positive changes happening to our colleagues’ businesses over the acceleration course. At our first session, we presented our projects with the goals we had set before ourselves, whereas at our last session we were required to present the results of three months’ of work. Many had literally had some breakthroughs. We, too, were able to find our point of growth, found a way to improve sales, and found the right partners for that. The knowledge we acquired is extremely valuable, and I will continue making good use of it, Tatyana Fedorova, a participant of the Growth Formula program, noted.