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After six months of participating in over 30 intensive trainings and validating their ideas in collaboration with UNICEF, the first batch of Elevate Impact Accelerator teams will be sharing their story this week. 

Elevate Impact Accelerator Demo Day will take place on Thursday 15^th December at the Charles Hostler Auditorium, American University of Beirut where the audience will have the chance to meet these social entrepreneurs, learn about their achievements, and hear them pitch their startup ideas.

Elevate Impact Accelerator - formed in partnership with UNICEF, funded by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and hosted by Beirut Digital District (BDD) – is the first social impact accelerator created in cooperation with any UN agency globally.

Made up of 39 early-stage entrepreneurs from across Lebanon, the seven teams have designed innovative, scalable hardware, and software solutions to address critical challenges affecting Lebanon and the world. Also, during 6 months the startups have competed in global and local competitions in which they’ve received accolades, and have made some significant achievements.

Below are a few of the startup remarkable achievements accomplished by 2 of the Batch 1 Elevate Impact Accelerator startups.

Bildits
Launched in December 2016 by Elias Chemaly Rayan Barhouce, and Wael Saade, Bildits is an innovative educational construction kit that replicates the real construction process and cultivates critical thinking, creativity and teamwork.

Bildits has managed to secure approximately $55K in funding since having joined the Elevate Impact Accelerator. Bildits kits are currently sold at Joué Club as of this month, just in time for the Christmas season.

In November they competed in the global competition, the Creative Business Cup in Copenhagen winning 3^rd place from among 62 startups. Also in November, they won 2^nd place at the Grow My Business Competition in Beirut.

FabricAID
Launched in February 2017 by Hussam Hanouni and Omar Itani, FabricAID collects used clothes from academic institutions, businesses, municipalities and NGOs, then sorts, cleans, and sells them for extremely affordable prices to pre-existing second hand shops and through their shops created through a social franchising program enabling marginalized youth the opportunity to open their own thrift stores with zero capital cost.

FabricAID has raised around $60K in funding during the past 6 months and have been exceptional at securing strategic partnerships, in particular two partnerships done with Arcenciel and Esmod. They have also secured a partnership with DOT, a local UNICEF partner, to recruit and employ 17 underserved refugee youth in Lebanon.

In November, FabricAID participated in the Safirlab training program in Paris, they also participated and were funded by the SoUKLB Idea Stage Social Accelerator in Beirut. They also were selected in the final top 10 of the SLUSH tech conference, from out of over 1400 applicants.

Head to Elevate Impact Accelerator Demo Day on Thursday to meet all the startups and learn about their journey.