Empower Entrepreneurship
Our ambition is to prototype a new economy, based on trust, where all agents -- entrepreneurs, freelancers, independent professionals, and startups -- contribute to each other’s well-being in a sustainable way.
In June 2022, Think Tank AlterContacts launched an international project to revive rural areas and contribute to a green, digital and resilient recovery of its economy. We will work together with local businesses and farmers to help them build more sustainable business models, train successors, and modernize their processes to have a positive or zero impact on the environment.
To help small businesses and self-employed professionals overcome the challenges of the pandemic and reactivate the economy, from May 2020 until December 2021 we ran the Lockdown Economy, a global non-profit grassroots social-economic and educational movement. The United Nations has recognized it as an Acceleration Action for the Sustainable Development Goals.
The goal of our project is to create opportunities to cover basic needs (food, shelter, medical support) for self-employed people who lost their source of income due to the pandemic. That will be done by enabling the government to outsource remote office tasks to freelancers and self-employed through existing freelance platforms. Our proposal was submitted to the European Commission during #EUvsVirus online Hackathon 24-26 April 2020.
It was a prototype of the global online ecosystem of entrepreneurs and freelancers with the goal to equip starting entrepreneurs with tools and skills, and connecting them to each other. Having mentors in Europe, North and Latin America, and Asia, in 2019 we hosted over 20 free events helping 150+ entrepreneurs on three continents.