Caravanserai Project, a hybrid social impact venture that advances the work of mission-driven entrepreneurs and organizations, is investing in empowering thirteen emerging mission-driven entrepreneurs who join the 2021-2022 SEED Lab Pre-accelerator to advance bold solutions.

“The 2021-2022 SEED Lab Fellows represent the talent and innovative thinking that exist in the Inland Empire, the region targeted by the program since its launch in 2018. As the only mission-driven pre-accelerator in the area, we are honored to support innovators often left out of mainstream programs who use their unique personal backgrounds and professional experiences to develop solutions for their communities’ problems.”

Mihai Patru, Caravanserai Project Executive Director

We Covered this in our Weekly Wire Roundup

Mission Driven Initiatives

Below we have listed the 13 mission-driven initiatives by Inland Empire entrepreneurs. These include education, healthcare, housing, food security, workforce, and gender/racial equity initiatives.

• Education (Ankita Ahluwalia; Lisa Booth)
• Healthcare (Kristie Allison; Regina Queen; Christine Peart)
• Housing (Noura Bishay)
• Food security (Lynn Summers)
• Gender and racial equity (Denise Davis; Anthony Russell Jerry)
• Workforce and immigration (Juan Maya Hernandez)
• Community engagement (Janelle Guerrero; Kai King)
• Economic empowerment (Armando Ehrenzweig)

Wells Fargo Funding

The Caravanserai Project previously received a grant of $1M from Wells Fargo. The grant was to be used as joint funding with other non-profit organizations for offering capacity building and technical assistance programs. The type of programs that the Caravanserai Project, along with IECC and IECF, has been doing include:

• Grant bulletins
• Breakthrough Masterclasses
• Social impact pre-accelerator
• Capacity Building Academy
• Webinars and digital strategy workshops

We also wrote about how the project takes its name from an interesting historical concept called Caravanserai. It is “inspired by the role the Caravanserai played throughout history. The caravanserais were well-known meeting places along trade routes from Asia and North Africa to Southeast Europe. These served as a melting pot for people from different cultures, motivations, and aspirations”.

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