About Endeavor
Founded in 1997, Endeavor fosters economic growth in countries worldwide by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating high-impact entrepreneurs. Endeavor’s entrepreneurs lead fast-growing businesses that generate jobs in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Endeavor provides its entrepreneurs with a network of seasoned business leaders who provide key ingredients to entrepreneurial success: mentorship, networks, strategic advice, and inspiration. Over the past 17 years, Endeavor Entrepreneurs have created more than 400,000 high quality jobs, directly reaching more than two million people across the world. Endeavor has achieved tangible results, with individuals working for Endeavor companies doubling their income over baseline or previous jobs, and Endeavor companies growing revenue 2.4 times faster than comparable firms over three years.
Current Operations of Endeavor
Endeavor is dedicated to high-impact entrepreneurship. Its main operations focus on identifying and supporting the continued growth of a select group of entrepreneurs, creating jobs, and adding revenues to foster entrepreneurship in those societies. Endeavor currently works in 21 countries across the world. In recent years, Endeavor’s operations have expanded into several countries; Endeavor launched in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Greece in 2012, Miami (US), Malaysia, and Morocco in 2013, and Peru and Spain in 2014.In 2011, Endeavor launched Endeavor Catalyst, a passive co-investment pool that uses donated funds to support Endeavor Entrepreneurs’ professional funding rounds and to provide funding for Endeavor’s growth and financial sustainability. Endeavor Catalyst has raised approximately $15 million to date and has made its first nine investments.
Approach and Distinguishing Features
Endeavor is an organization of, by, and for entrepreneurs. Endeavor believes that entrepreneurship is vital to economic growth and job creation, and recognizes the reality that entrepreneurs in growth markets face obstacles that inhibit successful scaling of businesses, such as limited management expertise, lack of role models, contacts, investors, etc. To this end, Endeavor provides immense support to rising entrepreneurs and acts as a springboard to catalyze their success with business establishment and job creation. Over 80% of Endeavor’s entrepreneurs give back to their local affiliates and commit to mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Endeavor’s entrepreneurs lead fast-growing, typically for-profit businesses that generate jobs and create revenues in growth markets. Endeavor looks for businesses with the potential to scale and become world-class ventures and industry leaders. Endeavor is distinct from many other organizations in its focus on high-growth, high-impact, for-profit companies that can scale. Academic research demonstrates that high-impact entrepreneurs generate a disproportionate number of jobs over other entrepreneurs.
2015 Kravis Prize
Kravis Prize Panel Discussion with Leading Changemakers
Every spring we hold the Kravis Prize Award Ceremony at Claremont McKenna College to honor the most recent recipient of the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Nonprofit Leadership. Over the years, this event has grown as we welcome back to campus all past Kravis Prize recipients to join in conversation with our Claremont community. This year, in celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the Kravis Prize, we asked our recipients to engage in a panel discussion, reflecting on how they have established their own entrepreneurial solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems. Moderated by recent CMC alum, Kyra McAndrews, ’15, this discussion involved past Kravis Prize Recipients: Roy Prosterman (Landesa, 2006), Hendrina Doroba (FAWE, 2008), Sakena Yacoobi (Afghan Institute of Learning, 2009), Rukmini Banerji (Pratham, 2010), Vicky Colbert (Fundación Escuela Nueva, 2011), Robin Smalley (mothers2mothers 2012), Kathy Spahn (Helen Keller International, 2014).Tania Zapata and Zafer Younis also joined in the discussion, on behalf of the 2015 Kravis Prize Recipient, Endeavor, as two entrepreneurs that are part of Endeavor’s network of high-impact entrepreneurs. We began our conversation asking our panelists: “What does being a Changemaker meant to you?” See what they have to say....
Kravis Prize Intern Juetzinia Kazmer Reflects on Summer with FAWE, part 2
This is the second part of a two-part series. Click here to read about the first part of Juetzinia’s experience at FAWE as a Kravis Prize Intern. Interning with FAWE Zanzibar, though not stressful, was full of surprises that pushed our team to think collaboratively and creatively─which is something I really loved while interning there. Every day was challenging and different, allowing me to pursue leadership opportunities within the chapter. One particular experience that has impacted me greatly was the 3-day intensive teacher training I developed and co-taught at the Center of Excellence in the village of Kijini. While sitting in the office one day, the head teacher at the Center of Excellence stopped by to ask Khadija Shariff, the national director, for help assessing student mastery of material inside the classroom. Sitting at the table he welcomed me into the conversation and I offered holding a teacher professional development workshop that would teach Active Participation techniques that allow teachers to check for understanding throughout the lesson. From there, we began brainstorming the format of the workshop so that these teaching techniques would fit both the culture and context of the Center of Excellence. Teaching this workshop was not only a blast, but also taught me a lot about my own positionality coming into new contexts and how to work cross-culturally. I loved working on this project because the teachers were given the space to think through the issues they were having and problem solve creatively. Our role was to act as facilitators. Here, I was able to see the power of education and creativity in raw form, which...