Expo financial grants transform six million lives around the world
Millions of farmers, students, teachers and people with special needs have had their lives transformed through programmes financially supported by Expo 2020 Dubai.
The Expo Live initiative has over the past five years helped more than 5.8 million people around the world through 140 programmes.
They include support for a Lebanese company that helps convert food waste and paper to compost; a Costa Rica company that uses bamboo instead as its main raw material; and another organisation in Colombia that uses technology to help low-income families formalise their property titles.
The grants from Expo ensured start-ups were able to break the “credibility barrier”, get access to additional capital, enhance their reach.
Yousuf Caires, senior vice president of Expo Live, said the programme had supported the education of 611,000 people through online learning and improved the livelihoods of 760,000 farmers.
“For many, the Expo Live grant was their first major investment,” he said.
“The Expo Live team is delighted that our global innovators were successful in raising, on average, six times more in additional funding, enhancing their work, creating more positive impact.”
The start-ups also helped create direct employment for 3,000 people and more than 160,000 jobs in the communities they serve.
Mr Caires said the projects showed that social entrepreneurship could help bring about positive change.
“Our global innovators remind us that creating a radically better future requires collective action, determination and relentless optimism.”
Under the Expo’s “global innovators” scheme, people and companies were chosen from more than 11,000 applicants from 184 nations with the goal to “make the world a better place” to live.
The projects have helped more than one million people receive medical aid and counselling during the pandemic.
Applications have been evaluated since 2016 by a team at Expo and grants of $100,000 to $500,000 awarded to organisations from 76 countries.
The work has touched lives in marginalised and low-income communities and backed sustainable schemes.
Trees have been replanted on deforested lands – an area of 3.6 million hectares, which is about the size of Belgium.
Companies chosen include Suyo, in Colombia, which uses technology to help low-income families formalise their property titles instead of depending on middlemen.
There was support for projects such as Bambu Pallet in Costa Rica, which uses bamboo instead of wood as the main raw material for pallets used for construction.
Marc Aoun, co-founder and chief executive of Compost Baladi, is one of the beneficiaries visiting the Expo site this week.
The Lebanese company has developed a patented solution for households, farmers, municipalities and companies to convert food waste and paper to compost and fertiliser.
“The Expo grant allowed us to overcome a common barrier every start-up faces, which is credibility with larger stakeholders, such as municipalities,” Mr Aoun said.
“Before, we worked with households and small farmers, but through the Expo we were able to commission two sites that we use not only to operate and provide service to 6,000 households, but also to show to other municipalities that this works.”
The company now has 200 customers, has contracts to set up composting stations for 18 municipalities in Lebanon and plans to expand to Jordan.
The team uses shipping containers to collect food waste and converts this into fertiliser on site at villages, farms, residences and supermarkets.
This diverts the waste from landfill, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and avoids the use of plastic bags.
“What is essential to success is that the organic waste is sorted at source,” Mr Aoun said. “If that is not done, it’s near impossible to separate contaminants such as glass, batteries, hazardous and infectious waste from that biowaste and still make it usable in agriculture.”
The company will soon take another step, using the tourist village of Byblos as the starting point. Waste generated from hotels and stores is turned into compost and used by farmers.
The farming community will now sell their organic produce to the hotel.
“Farmers will sell clean produce to the hotel and it will bring the hotel closer to the food they are providing their customers,” Mr Aoun said.
Being part of the Expo programme allows the company to promote its solutions.
“We are in our bubble of Lebanon and Jordan but there is so much potential out there,” Mr Aoun said.