Rwanga Foundation, in partnership with the COSV, implemented a project of soft incubation and acceleration opportunities for entrepreneurship ideas in the Media Sector promoting inclusive and sustainable growth in KR-I.

The project included six main phases as below:

1. Call for business ideas
2. Evaluation and pre-selection of ideas
3. Support to 10 projects by organizing a ten-day training programme
4. Submission of applications
5. Selection of four projects
6. Awarding the four projects with up to 15,000 Euro, mentoring and coaching

The final four winners are as follows:

• Candidate Name: Reshan Hemo
• Project summary: To raise community awareness through a satirical program (Comic Criticism) under the name of “Reshanism” which is currently running and has a fair impact on the society.
• Candidate Name: Zana Mahmood Ahmed
• Project summary: Developing a digital media software to manage and organize social media platforms for businesses in order to reach more people and increase sales.
• Candidate Name: Sary Abdullah Najib
• Project summary: Creating Kurdish audio books based on narrative speeches or abridged versions of books.
• Candidate Name: Majid Sharaf
• Project summary: Development of an online platform for the Kurdistan and Iraq doctors ‘tabibiraq.com’ and creating an application for Android and IOS to provide the site services for the public.

The Evaluation committee consisted of six members:

• Salwan Jameel Zaito – Independent Media Expert
• Khdir Domely – Independent Media Expert
• Dastan Qadir Abdullah – Rwanga Foundation Representative and Director of Projects
• Fadi Denno –COSV Livelihood Project Manager
• Ceren Karatas– COSV Business Development Services and Training Coordinator
• Kabar Fawzi – COSV Project Coordinator for Livelihood and Social Cohesion

For the next four months, Rwanga Foundation is going to monitor and coach these projects by providing support and assistance in order to optimize the sustainability of the projects.